Humphrey Spender (19 April 1910 – 11 March 2005) was a British photographer. Spender was one of the first British photographers to use a rangefinder camera and 35mm film in the 1930s. This meant that he was able to capture candid shots of life in action rather than the posed compositions required by a heavy large format camera.
His photographs and connections drew attention and he was soon recruited by the Daily Mirror to become a roving photographer. Under the nickname ‘Lensman’, Spender travelled round the country capturing artistic feature photographs. He was becoming frustrated by the newspaper’s demands for clichéd and staged photographs when he was contacted by Tom Harrisson who asked him to join Mass Observation’s Worktown study of life in Bolton.
Spender took around 850 photographs in Bolton and Blackpool on a series of visits between August 1937 and April 1938. He also made a number of paintings and drawings in the town which were sold to private collectors and have become lost over the passage of time. He also made a number of written observations which are held in the Mass Observation Archive and provide a fascinating accompaniment to his photographs.
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