This spring Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Penzance, is staging two exhibitions. The first, ‘Harry Penhaul: Life Through a Lens’, is a one-room show featuring around 30 informal portrait photographs of the local community in the 1950s by this well-known local press photographer.
Harry Penhaul (1914 – 1957) was born in Gulval, Penzance in 1914 and from a very early age had his sights firmly set on a career in photography. He served as an apprentice for four years with Messrs Lawley of the Terrace, Penzance and learned all there was to know about photography. He stayed at Lawley’s for eighteen months after his apprenticeship ended before setting up a partnership with another news photographer, Joe Churchward.
This partnership did not last long; Harry was progressing all the time, and could do everything from pressing the shutter, to delivering the final print. He had his own transport and darkroom, a supportive family and a desire to take photos so he launched himself into a solo career as a freelance photographer. However, World War II intervened, and Harry volunteered and served with the Royal Artillery. At the end of the War he immediately returned to his photographic work, which continued until his death.
The essence of news photography is speed and whenever Harry wasn’t rushing to the scene of an incident, he was dashing into Penzance to catch the London train with photos destined for national newspapers or magazines. His basic living, however, came from the coverage of the social events that provide a photographer with his bread and butter.
What made Harry Penhaul special was his friendliness and good nature. He was known to the whole of West Cornwall, proved by the emergence of his nickname ‘Flash Harry’, which appeared on a carnival float one year and was universally recognised and adopted.
Since acquiring Penhaul’s archive back in 2001, we have been busy digitising the vast collection of over 6,000 prints and glass plate slides, staging exhibitions of his work every few years.
This latest one-room show will feature some previously unseen images of life in and around West Cornwall in the 1950s, alongside some of his most well-loved images. Recently appointed Collections Officer, Tamsin Chaffin, says, “It has been fascinating researching the collection, and we are hoping that our visitors may even recognise some of the people in the photographs and help us to put names to faces.
