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Alongside photographer George Shepherd, we were pleased to donate this framed print to Trafford General Hospital earlier this year, where it is now on permanent display.Â
Shepherd took the photo of maternity nurses around Christmas time in 1967, when the hospital (the first to be opened as an NHS hospital by Nye Bevan) was still known as Park Hospital.Â
George Shepherd was born in Eccles, Salford, in 1933 into a working-class family of third-generation mill workers. Photography was his passion from a young age, and at around the age of 18, George started taking photos and carrying his camera wherever he went.Â
From the early 1950s to the mid-1970s, George’s lens was a window into the world he knew so intimately. He photographed, developed, and printed his own images, using the spare bedroom in his house as a dark room. His subjects were not just the places, buildings, and people of Salford and Manchester but the very essence of his own life, the places he had visited as a child with his father and the places where he had socialised and worked.Â
A collection of George Shepherd archival prints are available from the BCA online shop
