Esplanade, Bognor
Bognor Regis council seem to have altered so much on the Esplanade that I doubt we’ll ever be able to pin this walkie down, but it is unusual in that the company have added a what looks like an automatic date stamp to the side of the print, and the name of the town, as well as the normal hand written reference number. I assume all this was done at the darkroom stage while the prints were being exposed. These are two frames from what would have been a strip of three originally, and were found by Paul Godfrey. We have seen walkies by Sunny Snaps and Sunfilms taken in the town around the same time, but this is not by them, and is simply marked Walking Snaps on the back. I have one frame from the same firm but that only has day and month, and lacks the year date. The quality is much poorer than prints by their two bigger rivals (my example is so bleached out it’s hard to see anything!) but very filmic.
London Road, Bognor
Sunfilms walkies continue to generate as many questions as answers, and we have yet to fully understand their operations. So each new Sunfilms find which is dated or has the town written on by the owner helps to unravel the story. This frame from Lindsay is one such, as she identified the location for us as Bognor. I did a street view search and it turned out to be London Road, the main shopping area (now pedestrianised at this point). But it has changed so much it is quite hard to match on street view, even the church has been pulled down (in 1972). So I did a search for old photos and turned up a nice view of the road from the late 1950s which did correspond exactly. I’ve shown the photo below and added the family in to the version at the bottom of the page.
Sunfilms provided three frames on a strip using old movie cameras in the Thirties, and Lindsay dates this walkie to 1933 which ties in nicely. The photo shows her grandparents on the right while her father is the older lad helping with the push-chair; well one hand on the push-chair, the other holding a cornet!
Lindsay scanned me three complete strips which are not easy to find – most people just cut them up – and they will feature in the walking pictures book.
This then gives us a new location for the firm to add to the others we know about, but I suspect there will be more to find. What we do know about Sunfilms is on the site, and do get in touch if you have any of these strips.
tinted by hand
My thanks to Andrew Gordon for sending this unusual Sunny Snaps card in. I know it’s not a walkie, but the overall result with the colouring is so attractive I had to post it here. Colour photography had been developed but not for the mass market, so many seaside photography firms offered a colouring service at an extra charge. I’ve seen so few examples that I assume not many people went for the option. After all, the whole idea of such prints was that they were purchased (often on the same day they were taken) as souvenirs. Having to spend more and wait longer went against this concept. Most professionally hand coloured photos you see are more formal portraits, often weddings, and larger prints, where the extra expense was felt more justifiable.
There was of course an alternative, DIY. Firms offered sets of coloured paints which were formulated to work on photographic surfaces. These were oil based (normal water-colours wouldn’t dry properly) and applied using ordinary fine brushes. The results depended on the skill of the user! Here it appears one of the children in the photo was allowed to have a go, and they’ve not done too badly. As there is some evidence of paint drying in patches, they might not have had access to a proper set of hand tinting paint, but the overall result is very evocative. The usual Sunny Snaps type panel gives the date 1937, and Andrew says it was taken at at Elmer Sands in West Sussex (which is close to Bognor Regis.) It shows Mrs. Margaret Gordon, Mrs. Galder and Mrs. Nelson-Wright with their children. You can read more about Sunny Snaps on the site.
Go Home On A Postcard • Vintage seaside photography 