Fading Images is a web site resource for: people researching their family histories; and historians interested in Cambridgeshire photographs and photographers. Sections of the site include: an A-Z of photographers; a list of photographic societies; dating old photographs; and mystery photographs. Fading Images is run by Les Waters, who can be contacted at webmaster@fadingimages.uk. I’ve recently been added to the A-Z. This is my entry.
Name: HUMAN, Brian b. 1946
Address: Cambridge
Working Dates: 1970s onwards
Subjects, styles, advertising, other relevant information: Self-taught non-professional photographer. Worked as a town planner for Cambridgeshire County Council and Cambridge City Council from 1971 to 2008 and contributed photographs to planning publications. A key interest between 1978 and 2002 was photographing local places, events and activities in Cambridgeshire. The work was published with accompanying text in magazines, including Cambridgeshire Huntingdon and Peterborough Life, East Anglia Monthly, East Anglian Magazine, Cambridgeshire Life, The Lady, The Countryman, and Cambridgeshire Journal. The articles and photographs appeared mostly under the by-line of James Frank or Robert Irwin.
A photobook, A Cambridgeshire Journal (2012), brought together a selection of the photographs (a copy is in the Cambridgeshire Collection). The fen landscape is the subject of an ongoing long-term photography project. Photographs taken in Cambridge and elsewhere in the County are included in Brian’s other photo books, e.g. Ruckenfigure Revisited (2013), The Beechwoods (2018) and Take a Seat – Take a Moment (2020).
Brian was one of the original founders and Directors of the Cambridge Darkroom, along with Roy Hammans, Mark Lumley & Pavel Buchler. It was an innovative community gallery and photographic workshop in Cambridge and the only one of its kind in the Eastern Region. Brian co-curated with Chris Carling the exhibition ‘Fen Archive’, held there in 1986.
References: Brian has a blog at https://brianhuman.co.uk/wp/, which includes current photography and photographic miscellanea under the strap line ‘Things seen; things that interest me; snaps of encounters’. He is a tutor on photography at the Cambridge University of the Third Age.