Picturing the mid-20th century

February 22, 2007 1:31 PM

Helping make a historical documentary, I'm looking for photo archives of various scenes in England in the 20th century.

The story line follows a working class woman from school (1910s-1920s) through working as a clerk in a shoe shop (1930s) and marriage and homemaking mid 1930s through the 1950s.

She lived in the Midlands mostly, not in London.

We need images of interiors of classrooms, shops and houses, and related objects, that we can use freely. 1930s shoe advertising would be good too.

We're not actually in England, so we need online archives because we can't just pop around to addresses in the UK.

posted by zadcat to media & arts (4 comments total)

I have no idea about copyright etc., but Exploring 20th Century London is an impressive archive of all sorts of random stuff.
posted by heh3d at 2:10 PM on February 22, 2007

Leodis is an archive of photos from Leeds - it's north, not midlands, but probably a better fit than London. The advanced search is great - for example, here are all images from 1910 to 1920 with the word "school" in their description as thumbnails
posted by handee at 3:25 PM on February 22, 2007

Check out Northampton Boot and Shoe Industry
posted by adamvasco at 1:43 AM on February 23, 2007

English Heritage has some pretty good online photo archives. I'm not sure of their usage restrictions however.
posted by medium format at 4:45 AM on February 23, 2007