In Conversation: Victor Wedderburn & Tim Smith
Two photographers, both living in Bradford and making images in the same areas, both drinking in the same pub - and yet somehow, they never met.
Published: May 9, 2025
In this short film, we bring Bradford photographers Victor and Tim together for a journey through Victor’s memories of life on Lumb Lane known to locals as 'the Frontline' in the early 1980s, as both photographers look ahead to their respective exhibitions as part of Bradford 2025.
Victor Wedderburn Jr arrived in the UK from Jamaica in 1971, joining his Windrush Generation parents here in Bradford. In the early 1980s, he used his redundancy payout from Croft Engineers to buy a second-hand camera and set about documenting life in the city – particularly the African-Caribbean communities in and around Lumb Lane in Manningham, the so-called “Frontline”. In 1985, around the same time, photographer Tim Smith first came to Bradford – and Smith began to document the social and cultural lives of some of the minority communities who made their homes in Bradford District.
Two photographers, both living in Bradford and taking images in the same areas, both documenting the day-to-day lives of real people and the rich diversity of Bradford’s communities, both even drinking in the same pub – and yet, somehow, they never met.
In this short film, we bring Victor and Tim together for a journey through Victor’s memories of life on Lumb Lane as both photographers look ahead to their respective exhibitions as part of Bradford 2025.
