Grip tightly people, as Observer Towers are about to recommend that you leave Greater Kennington and check out a free exhibit. Your destination is the quite new and spiffy Lambeth Archives in Brixton. The exhibit is called ‘A Vanished Kennington’ and is a miniscule slice of almost 500,000 slides that Manning Studio bequeathed to Lambeth in 2022 and they are now beginning to digitise.

 
Manning Photographers was founded in 1949 by James Manning, and later taken over by his son Frank. The studio operated from 1952 onwards in Windmill Row, Kennington and continued until 2022, and the closed premises is very much still there. The Manning’s were at their core grafting photographers. They focussed mostly on wedding photos of local people as they were the most lucrative. However, over the years this evolved into local buildings, headshots, photos for industry, commissions from local retailers, even ID card photos.

If you look closely, you can make out local buildings such as a wedding party in a bombed out St. Mary’s church In Kennington Park Road, or buildings still existing in Kennington Cross. Some are even on the homepage of your favourite website.  As a commercial photographer you can see photos of Jane Asher dipped in chocolate or the prize shop of Granada Bingo, now The Metro flats in Kennington Road.

Some of the slides can be found on the Lambeth Archives website but it is more fun to traipse down to Brixton to experience the photos and also see what inspired his work, such as African villages. It’s also fun to pick out the famous faces, such as the Queen whizzing through Kennington Cross or Mary Berry baking.

A Vanished Kennington is on now until 16 August at Lambeth Archives and, like everything good in life, is totally free.