Visit to Lowry Gallery 27th April 2006

We viewed an Exhibition of paintings depicting the arrival of leisure pursuits enjoyed for the first time by ordinary working people.

In the early 1930's workers were encouraged to travel by train to the seaside by posters commissioned by the railway companies, showing families enjoying sunny sandy beaches and swimming and diving into the sea.

There were also secluded single sex bathing areas available to men and one of the paintings showed a number of pale skinned men cavorting in the nude. A first for nude bodies to be depicted other than religious type compositions.

We also viewed a painting showing an amazon type young woman encouraging physical excercise, which carried a mild reference to the emerging Hitler youth campaigns to encourage physical fitness.

It is thought that governments were actively encouraging fitness in preparation for war.

The second exhibition we viewed were photographs by the Manchester Guardian renowned Graham Finlayson who covered the early twentieth century in part, but mainly covering the 1950's and 60's. The photographs were of people and streets in Manchester and Salford, as well as other areas.

There were hundreds of photos to look at, far too many to recall, but a most enthralling story of the area showing the people going about their daily business.

Ann once again provided a most excellent audio description of all that we saw and the curator of the gallery gave us a very interesting introduction for the Lowry building and Gallery.

The Gallery made every effort to accommodate our group and had produced some large print information. They asked for our comments and we suggested that the font should be larger, with double spaced lines and also a different colour ink and background.

Once again our thanks to Mary for arranging this first visit of visually impaired people to a conducted tour of an exhibition and the special facility afforded to us.