John Walmsley (photographer)

A self-published book with a text by Jenny Ellis, who played Mother Courage in the photos, is planned for late 2021. The book will have contributions from many actors who readily acknowledge they would not be where they are today had it not been for their training in rep’ (Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Judi Dench, Sir Ian McKellen and Timothy West).

Liverpool Free School, also known as the Scotland Road or Scottie Road Free School, was founded and run as an alternative to normal school by two teachers, John Ord and Bill Murphy. This new school had no headmaster nor any form of hierarchy and did not recognise any central authority. It was controlled by parents, the kids and teachers, together. The school was registered with the Department for Education and was classed as "Education Otherwise", same as home schoolers, and was still subject to regular inspections. The students begged and borrowed an old building, desks, books, and an old ambulance for trips. The photos were exhibited at the Bluecoat in Liverpool in 2017 and Walmsley arranged for John Ord and the ‘kids’ to come to the opening night, the first time they’d met in decades.

Because of his involvement with both education and architecture, the British government sent Walmsley to Armenia, in 1990 following the massive earthquake two years earlier. He documented the rebuilding of the Lord Byron School, a public school in Gyumri, Armenia one of many destroyed by the earthquake. Because it worked in the English language, when the Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev asked for international assistance, the British government responded by having British architects design a new building which was built and equipped by British companies.

In 1979 Walmsley received a grant from the Scottish Arts Council to live on the new Wester Hailes estate and be an Artist in Residence at the Wester Hailes Education Centre He worked with the students at the education centre, as well as photographing every day life in the neighbourhood. These photographs were made into a booklet and an exhibition at the time. A self-published book is planned for late 2021 to coincide with an exhibition (link to follow) at the Whale Arts Gallery in Wester Hailes. All the photos will be in the archive at the School of Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh for use by students and researchers (link to follow).

Walmsley was a part-time lecturer at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. This was a particularly creative period at the AA with many inspirational students, including architect Zaha Hadid and staff. He noticed that most architectural photos excluded people. He believed that, while there was certainly a place for such photographs, a building is mainly for and about people, so he encouraged the students to shoot both with and without people. The photos of life at the AA in 1975 here can be found online.

Walmsley worked on commissions for magazines, book publishers, government departments and charities but always retained his copyright. He also shot many personal projects including one on repertory theatre. In 1973 he followed the Salisbury Playhouse production of ‘Mother Courage’, living and working with the company from first read-through to first-night, including learning lines in their ‘Digs’, finding and preparing the props, all the different rehearsals and time off for shopping, laundrette, boating on the river and more. Walmsley believes this record of theatre life is unique in its breadth and depth and is now a historical document.

Walmsley was a Fellow at Digswell House, a large country house in Digswell, Hertfordshire from 1972 to 1976. Digswell Arts provided living and working space to a wide variety of practicing artists: potters (including Elizabeth Fritsch), painters, dancers, woodcarvers, film-makers, jazz musicians (including saxophonist Lol Coxhill), stained glass workers and more. Walmsley was the resident photographer and built a public darkroom to run photography classes for the locals. He also photographed the resident artists at work.

Walmsley, still a student, had permission to photograph at A.S. Neill's democratic school Summerhill, a place where he immediately felt at home. The photos were published in 1969 with a text by Leila Berg as Neill & Summerhill: A Man and His Work, a Penguin Education Special. Berg and Walmsley worked together on numerous books for the next 35 years. Walmsley says, "These were either about how society treats children or were early readers, stories of everyday life, for kids to cuddle up with mum or dad". During Walmsley's final year at art school, he began supplying photos to educational textbook publishers, something he continued to do for decades afterwards.

To mark the 50th anniversary of the Guildford School of Art sit-in, there was an exhibition at Guildford House Gallery. Walmsley co-curated it and co-edited the catalogue ‘Finding Our Voice’ with Brian Dunce, one of the staff members who were sacked during the sit-in.

John Walmsley (born 1947) is a freelance British documentary photographer and educationalist. His work is featured in the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Tate Britain Library, the National Art Library at the V&A, the V&A Museum of Childhood, Museum of Liverpool and la Bibliothèque nationale in Paris. He is a member of The Society of Authors, the National Union of Journalists and The Royal Photographic Society. His work has been published in over a thousand books worldwide. He is the author of the Penguin Education Special, Neill & Summerhill: A Man and His Work (1969) with a text by Leila Berg.