Lost Album

"I had forgotten all about these photographs until recently when on my 70th birthday my wife presented me with an album she had treasured all through the years. This lost album of photographs contains the very essence of the 1950s for me" – Basil Hyman

Booth-Clibborn Editions presents "The Lost Album", a stunning anthology of black and white photography and vintage memorabilia which provide a personal snapshot of everyday life in Britain during an almost forgotten era. Hyman captures the nostalgia and raw spirit of 1950's Britain through a range of intimate portraits, scenes of daily family life and popular entertainment and public events such as The Festival of Britain and The Queen's Coronation.

Hyman's photography paints an affectionate portrait of a country undergoing immense social upheaval, which saw a return, after the dark war years, to some sort of everyday normality. Sandwiched between the troubled war years and the crazy hedonism of the 1960s, the 1950s was very much a decade of transition, from the stiff formality and politeness of previous decades to a greater sense of informality, to a relaxation of customs. Courtesy still prevailed in the 1950s, however, and now seems old-fashioned. This was a time that was characterised not by naivety but by a certain simplicity of lifestyle, by core values which everyone knew and respected and which have now changed irrevocably and have almost entirely vanished.