LORANT’S Michael Hallett

Stefan Lorant with Michael Hallett, Lenox Mass, February 1997 photo: Sue Mead

‘What is the use of a book’, thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversations.’ Lewis Carroll from Alice in Wonderland, 1865

For Heinz K. Henisch (1922-2006) who understood the Lorant enigma, and provided unwavering support, wisdom & wit.

The ARTicle Press:

Michael Hallett was Founding Publishing Editor for The ARTicle Press, a publishing venture run by the University of Central England's Department of Art (now Birmingham City University, School of Art). The Press published some fifteen scholarly publications and one journal between late-1990 and March 1997. It was very much a one-man show in those early days of the computer using Apple Mac and Pagemaker.

Republishing in 2020

The Real Story of Picture Post was originally published in 1994 by The ARTicle Press with copyright being retained by the two authors. published much of his later work with his own imprint, Author’s Edition. Now The Real Story of Picture Post is being republished with additions by Michael Hallett under his own imprint, CrabApple Publications. The crab apple is a versatile fruit indigenous to Worcestershire.

Published by CrabApple Publications, Worcester. U.K.

Designed with Pages using Helvetica Neue fonts.

Copyright © 2020 Michael Hallett

All rights reserved. The scanning, uploading and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the author is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

ISBN see back cover First edition / v2.3a / September 10, 2020

The author can be contacted at [email protected]

The dedication that Stefan Lorant wrote on Michael Hallett’s copy of The Real Story of Picture Post The Real Story of Picture Post (original text)

Michael Hallett, Principal Lecturer, School of Theoretical & Historical Studies in Art & Design, University of Central England.

Stefan Lorant’s Picture Post was one of the early popular pictorial magazines in England. Before its birth in 1938, a number of other pictorial publications, like Illustrated News, The Sphere, The Tatler, The Sketch, and The Bystander were already displayed on the news-stands. All these magazines catered to the upper classes. Picture Post appealed to the common man. After two years of editing and bringing Picture Post’s circulation to 1.7 million Lorant left for America. He was succeeded by his assistant, , who edited the magazine for the next decade. After Picture Post’s publisher Edward Hulton sacked Hopkinson in 1950, there were a series of editors until the magazine expired. Its life lasted from October 1938 to June 1957. Talk today to people in England who by virtue of their age remember Picture Post, and they will recall the magazine with admiration and affection. What made it so special, so unique, so remarkable? Keith Waterhouse writes nostalgically. ‘Just walk down a terrace street or along a suburban avenue on a spring Sunday morning, when you’ll catch a whiff of a dozen roast beef dinners floating out from a dozen open windows. It is an essentially English aroma that somehow embraces a dozen other flavours - pubs, allotments, Sunday papers, cricket, municipal parks and Picture Post manages to capture all this flavour in black and white...’ ‘What Picture Post did (brilliantly) was to explore the fascinating range of small social foothills - commercial travellers’ dinner dances, anglers’ outings, amateur dramatic nights, street parties, mystery coach tours, mock parliaments, flower shows, market days, jumble sales, pigeon races, whippet races, brass band contests, darts matches, tennis matches and all the rest of it - that more than the Pennine chain itself, form the backbone of England.’ For the English, Picture Post arrived in critical times. Its birth coincided with the agreement between Chamberlain and Hitler for ‘peace for our time’, a year before the outbreak of the Second World War. There was a build-up in the war effort: the RAF took delivery of more than 400 planes a month, free air raid shelters were distributed to London homes, conscription was introduced, children were evacuated from cities, food was rationed and farmers were urged to ‘dig for victory’. George VI was on the throne, and in May1940 became Prime Minister of a wartime coalition government. Picture Post responded to the upheavals in Europe, by explaining the important issues and voicing strong criticism of Chamberlain’s policies - and pussy footing with Hitler. Lorant’s creation of Picture Post was a continuation of his work on publications in , , and in England. He was not a ‘penniless Hungarian refugee’ as one of his detractors pictured him, but one of the most revered and successful editors in Europe, with a firm understanding of the financial constraints of magazine publishing. Before he came to England in the spring of 1934 to find a publisher for his book I was Hitler’s Prisoner, a diary of his experiences in Nazi prisons in Munich and where he was kept for over six months in ‘protective custody’, he edited magazines in three languages - in German, in Hungarian and in English. Within a week of his arrival, he was asked by Odhams Press, the publishers of some fifty magazines, to start Weekly Illustrated, the first popular English pictorial magazine, selling for 2d. Born in in 1901, Stefan Lorant came from a well-to- do middle class family. His father, as a young man, worked in newspapers. After his marriage he became manager of Erdélyi, the prominent photographic studio in Budapest which catered for the royal family, the aristocracy and the upper classes. In 1917, his father lost his life in the war. Two years later, in 1919, the 18 year old Lorant graduated from the Academy of Economics and left Budapest not wishing to live under the Fascist dictatorship of Admiral Horthy. Between the years of 1920 and 1925, first in Austria, then in Germany - he became a film maker, making fourteen films altogether. He recalls, ‘At first I was a still photographer doing pictures for publicity, then I became a cameraman, a scriptwriter, and finally a director - all within a single year.’ His very first film, the Life of Mozart, established him as a sought-after cameraman. Thus, eighteen years before the first issue of Picture Post appeared, the 19 year old Lorant was well known in the film world. In 1925, having mastered the German language, he started writing articles for newspapers, then he became - through a fluke - editor of the newly published Das Magazin. Following that he edited the film magazine UFA and the Sunday magazine Bilder Courier. When offered the post as Berlin editor of the Münchner Illustrierte Presse, he accepted. Within a year he became chief editor and moved to Munich. Under his guidance the paper became the first modern picture magazine in the world - with a weekly circulation of 750,000. When Hitler came to power in Bavaria in March 1933 Lorant was among the first editors to be put in political prison by the Nazis. No reason was given for his imprisonment. Six and a half months later, after the Hungarian government succeeded in obtaining his release, he returned to his home city where within 24 hours he was offered editorship of the Sunday supplement of Pesti Napló, the leading newspaper in Budapest. During the day he worked in the editorial office and in the evening he wrote the book based on his diaries which he had smuggled out of prison. When I was Hitler’s Prisoner was ready for publication by the spring of 1934, Lorant left Budapest for London to find an English publisher. Within a day a publisher was found and Lorant was asked by Odhams Press to reshape their floundering magazine Clarion. Instead of reshaping it, he made the dummy for a popular paper and Odhams accepted his suggestion. Weekly Illustrated, which he created in 1934 was an immediate success. His book came out in England the following year and received rave reviews. Wickham Steed, the great political writer, wrote in The Observer ‘that his book will live longer than Hitler’s Germany’. The Sunday Express featured the book on its front page. Its 8-column banner headline lauded it as ‘the most moving book to come out of Germany’. Lorant first heard of Edward Huston’s existence when, in mid- April 1938, Maxwell Raison came to see him in his Lilliput office at 34 Chancery Lane to ask him to contribute some ‘political juxtapositions’, similar to the ones he was doing in Lilliput, for a new political weekly which his friend Hulton was to publish. The amused Lorant declined. But Raison and Lorant hit it off. Raison borrowed a volume of Lorant’s edited Münchner Illustrierte Presse to show Edward Hulton. Shortly thereafter Lorant and Hulton met. Lorant was not impressed with the young millionaire or his enthusiasm towards Oswald Mosley and his blackshirts. However Maxwell Raison was persistent. He was determined to get Lorant for the newly formed Hulton Press. An agreement was reached whereby Lorant would create a pictorial magazine, which Hulton Press was to finance. The nature of this magazine would be left entirely to Lorant. He was to be the absolute editor of this new publication, without any interference. The only condition was that Edward Hulton would pen a weekly article for it, but even this was not sacrosanct from editorial control. ‘When he gave me his first article, I handed it to Tom Hopkinson, who was my assistant, and told him to rewrite it’, says Lorant. ‘Tom did a good job, but of course the author’s name on the article read Edward Hulton. It was a modest price I paid for having a free hand over my new magazine.’ Before Picture Post was born, Hulton Press bought the shares of Lilliput from Pocket Publications (owned by Lorant, Alison Blair, and Sydney Jacobson). It was a monthly pocket sized magazine, selling for 6d., publishing articles and short stories of major literary figures and photographs by the more important photographers of the day. ‘Sydney was my assistant editor at Lilliput, and he remained in that position. I remained editor of Lilliput as long as I was in England. During the week I worked on Picture Post, at weekends on Lilliput.’ Picture Post was a continuation of Lorant’s work as editor of the Münchner Illustrierte Presse, and of the Sunday magazine Pesti Napló, and of Weekly Illustrated. He says, ‘I always tried to appeal to the common man, to the workers, and also to the intelligentsia. Early in my career I jotted in my notebook what I intended to do, and this is what I wrote: to tell the truth, to enlighten the readers of subjects on which they have little knowledge; not to underestimate them or disregard their intelligence; but share with them a common knowledge, to learn together.’ Lorant explains the basis of editing Picture Post. ‘I tried to use pictures as a composer uses notes; I tried to compose a story in photographs.’ The creation of the dummy for Picture Post a few weeks before the first issue appeared in October 1938 confirms this. ‘When I had collected all the pictorial material I needed, I asked Sydney Jacobson to come for the weekend to Aldenham House Club, near Elstree, where I lived at the time. There, in two days I sketched out all the layouts of the magazine and as I completed the pages, I handed them to Sydney, who sat next to me in the room, to write the captions. We worked the whole of Saturday and the whole of Sunday. The dummy was completed in two days. It became the first issue, with hardly any changes.’ The few alterations were little more than a change of type face for the heading or the moving of a photograph from the top of a page to the bottom, to make the layout more harmonious. In a television interview some decades later Sydney Jacobson, by then Lord Jacobson, remembers clearly. ‘Stefan was very secretive about the sort of paper he in mind...I don’t think he talked very much about it. But all the time things were churning out in his mind...His working methods were unpredictable. He could work steadily through the day or he could work not at all during the day and then work right through the night.’ ‘He had moments of great Hungarian temper which to outsiders appeared uncontrollable, but in fact was one of his working methods. He could lose his temper in order to get a point and he knew exactly when to lose his temper and when to recover his temper. I have seen him in a flaming row with someone, with his hair standing on end, his eyes popping out and a second later he would give a quiet grin and say: “Thank God, this is over.” He won his point.’ Lorant brought to Picture Post many years editorial experience. Ideas and stories which were published up to thirteen years before were improved upon. Topics that he had used previously and had proved successful provided a starting point for Picture Post. In the first issue Hans Bauman’s photo essay The “Proms” Conductor Sir Henry Wood Celebrates His Half-Century’ was similar to a photo essay again by Bauman in Weekly Illustrated in September 1934. The pedigree for ‘an orchestra plays’ goes back even further with Lorant publishing a similar story in the Pesti Napló magazine in 1934 using the Hungarian photographer Károly Escher, and in the Münchner Illustrierte Presse of September 1, 1932 with Dr Erich Salomon. Kurt Hübschmann’s effervescent photograph of a girl on a rollercoaster with her skirt provocatively riding high was too daring in 1934, when the original story appeared in Weekly Illustrated. Four years later Lorant who remembered the picture, printed it in an early issue of Picture Post. One of the myths surrounding Picture Post relates to its size. It has been suggested that it mirrored the 35mm camera format, though even a cursory glance shows that the page size is considerably squarer than the three-by-two format of the 35mm frame. In reality, the magazine’s format had nothing to do with the 35mm format. It evolved in a decision between made by printer and editor. Lorant recalls ‘I had a talk with David Greenhill, head of the Sun Engraving Company in Watford, whom I had known for years. He was the printer of Weekly Illustrated. We discussed the problem: how many pages could the roller hold economically without wastage of paper. It was as simple as that. There was no argument about it.’ Neither Edward Hulton nor the other two directors of Hulton Press, William Dickenson and Maxwell Raison, had any idea of what kind of magazine Lorant would create. Hulton’s main interest was in the relationship between pictures and text. The principal arguments between the editor and directors were over the print orders. The directors thought that a print order of 250,000 would be more that enough - so they advertised that figure in World Press News. Lorant wanted double that number and was prepared to leave if the print order for the first issue was less than that. Lorant’s suggestion prevailed. Greenhill, the printer and Holding, the circulation manager supported him. As it came nearer to publication day it was discovered that 500,000 would not be enough, so the print order for the first issue was raised to 750,000. The uncomfortable position of a foreigner was keenly felt by Lorant. He was not an admirer of who at Godesberg and Munich was ready to negotiate and co-operate with Hitler. Lorant knew that Hitler could not be trusted and he lambasted and ridiculed the Führer and Chamberlain within the pages of Lilliput. But he was a strong supporter of Winston Churchill who became Prime Minister in 1940. Before Churchill changed his position from First Lord of the Admiralty, Picture Post ran five substantial articles on and by him. The professional relationship between Churchill and Lorant dates from a time when Churchill was still in the ‘political wilderness’. Wickham Steed’s ‘Churchill’ is a two part 16 page article immediately preceding Churchill’s view on ‘What Britain’s Policy Should Be!’ in the issue of March 11, 1939. The subtitle of the article reads: ‘A few days ago, the editor of Picture Post paid a visit to Mr Winston Churchill in his country house in Chartwell, Kent. The editor asked Mr Churchill to answer 13 Questions about Britain’s policy. Here they are - with Mr Churchill’s answers.’ Churchill responded to Lorant’s article on ‘encirclement’ published in the August 19, 1939 issue - the first page in English and the second page translated into German - with the request that readers ‘cut the page out and send it to your friends in Germany’. But it is the sub-heading to the original Wickham Steed article which anticipates that, for Churchill, the ‘greatest moments of his life are yet to come’. Churchill was later to tell friends that Lorant was a great help to him becoming Prime Minister. There is a great respect shown by Lorant towards his photographers. He used a number of those who had worked for him before in Germany, providing further continuity with his earlier publications. Two of his photographers at the beginning of Picture Post were Germans: Hans Bauman (who later changed his name to Felix H. Man) and Kurt Hübschmann (who later signed himself as Kurt Hutton). Also John Heartfield, who made photo-montages. Lorant recalls, ‘I admired the montages he did for AIZ (Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung) in Berlin. I put his montage (with a military helmet) on the cover of Picture Post, and published a portfolio of his montages in Lilliput - it was the first publication of his work in England.’ The reason why photographers in Picture Post did not get credit was that a great number of picture stories were made by German refugees who had no working permits in England. ‘They were grateful that their names did not appear’, Lorant explains. A number of noted European photographers of the 1920’s and 1930’s worked for Lorant. Dr Erich Salomon, André Kertész, Brassai, Martin Munkácsi, - all of them close friends of his. A similar situation existed with literary figures such as A.J. Cronin, J.B. Priestley, George Bernard Shaw, and H.G. Wells. ‘I was an early member of the Pen Club.’ says Lorant. There was also a close association between Lorant and political figures of various persuasions - such as Winston Churchill, Nye Bevan, Hugh Dalton, Stafford Cripps, American ambassador Joseph Kennedy, also Brendan Bracken, and Robert Boothby. Picture Post’s circulation had risen to 1.7 million under Lorant’s editorship, thus it provided a potent platform for them to promote their ideas. The criteria Lorant used for pictures he published became that of many succeeding picture editors throughout the world. His tenets were printed in the 1938 Modern Photography Annual. It read: The photograph should not be posed, rather the camera should be as the notebook of a trained reporter, recording contemporary events as they happen, without trying to stop them to make a picture; people should be photographed as they really are and not as they would like to appear; photo reportage should concern itself with men and women of every kind and not simply with a small social clique; everyday life should be portrayed in a realistic, unselfconscious way.’ Lorant admits that his working methods were not conventional ones, but neither was Picture Post a conventional magazine. ‘I am sure the staff - an extremely small one - had suffered, though they never really complained. That came years later when they relived their fantasies.’ He says, ‘Theirs were nine-to-five jobs. I am sure that at five in the afternoon, some of them would have liked to leave the office and go to the nearest pub. On most days, they could. But not on press days. On that day they had to stay at their desk, at times until midnight or after.’ ‘I did most of the work first in my head’, says Lorant. ‘I composed the pages, thinking them out in my mind, thus the young people on the staff - they were five in all - could not comprehend what I was doing. It seemed to them that it was not working. I put my ideas on paper only after I developed them in my head. I composed every issue as a whole, not piecemeal. Tom Hopkinson wrote in his autobiography, that for days on end I did not seem to do any work at all. This is nonsense! Nobody ever accused me of being lazy. I was the first in the office in the morning and the last to leave. Picture Post appeared week after week, without a lag. And it always appeared on schedule. How could it have been otherwise with over a million print run for each issue? Yes, there were times when the youngsters had to wait until I completed the layouts. I composed the entire issue - every page myself eighty to a hundred pages. And remember, the whole staff consisted of only five people; Tom Hopkinson, Lionel Birch, Honor Balfour, Richard Darwell, and my art assistant H.E. Bewick. We had no editorial conferences. I made all the decisions by myself. The editorial content of Picture Post was produced by a one-man band.’ It is so easy to say in retrospect, that Picture Post’s success was inevitable; because everything was in its favour, or because the miniature cameras had opened a new era in still photography. The Ermanox and Leica cameras were well established in 1938 by the time Picture Post was born. Lorant and his photographers had used them since the middle of the 1920’s, a decade earlier. In 1934, when Weekly Illustrated came out, Leica pictures were nothing new. Spreads taken with the Leica appeared on The Derby, on Wimbledon, on cricket at Lords, all photographed by Lorant. Dr. Erich Salomon used his Ermanox in the twenties, as did Bauman, Hutton, Brassai, Kertész and Cartier Bresson. Another myth suggested that Lorant often missed his deadline with the printers, sometimes by one day, sometimes by two. But there can be no logic to this. ‘The facts clearly prove that such allegations were without basis of fact. How can an editor go to Press twenty-four or forty-eight hours after his deadline? No printer would allow it. To keep the presses idle for two days? How could the printer catch up with the printing of millions of copies?’ Lorant explains, ‘Editors and printers have always had arguments about Press days. The printer always wants material as early as possible - to prepare the plates and to save on overtime - while the editor is anxious to stretch the deadline for as long as possible so he can include the latest stories of the week.’ Official circulation figures show that Picture Post was a tremendous success right from the beginning. The first issue sold 705,954 copies - an unheard of figure for a new magazine in English publishing. A marked drop is usually anticipated by the second issue, with the hope of returning to the original level after a month or two. With Picture Post, the circulation dropped only marginally for the second issue (which sold 675,517 copies), and climbed to 741,771 the week after. The sixth issue sold 884,489 copies, the seventh, 907,934, and the eleventh in December 1938, passed the million mark. It sold 1,025,548 copies. Lorant remembers that it was one of ‘our best issues, the first one with 104 pages. And all for only 3d.’ An advertisement a couple of months later in the February 18, 1939 issue announced: We are printing this week 1,600,000 copies of Picture Post. This is 250,000 copies more than a fortnight ago’. Within six months of its first appearance, Picture Post’s print order had climbed to some 1,700,000 copies. Assuming each copy was seen by five to six people - half of England’s adult population read each issue. Picture Post’s immediate popular appeal is reflected by a song, Picture Girl by Wright and Nicholls, written and composed some weeks after Picture Post was born. Within a month, all the bands in London were playing it.

When I saw your picture in the Picture Post I fell in love with you! And now that I’ve met you, I realise That pictures in the Picture Post, They never tell lies. It gave a full description of your beauty and charms; I never dreamt I’d ever hold you in my arms! I saw your picture in the Picture Post, And now you belong to me!

Lorant’s’ success with Picture Post was due to his gift for recognising the value of pictures and presenting them in a straightforward and logical manner. He had an acute political awareness of developments within a Europe in turmoil; with Hitler on the march, with Mussolini following him, with Stalin’s rule in Russia. Lorant in Picture Post came out on the side of humanity, on the side of decency, on the side of common sense. He appealed not to the establishment but to the common man. He believed in giving his readership value for money. Initially at 80 pages for 3d. and within a few issues 120 pages for 3d., Picture Post represented excellent value when compared to Weekly Illustrated which launched with 24 pages for 2d. The original Weekly Illustrated offered a considerably larger page size - 405 by 290mm compared with 347 by 260mm with Picture Post - but this was offset by up to a 500% increase in the number of pages. By comparison, the larger page of Weekly Illustrated had given Lorant greater flexibility in his layouts, but the increased number of pages for Picture Post offered Lorant greater flexibility with the length of his stories. In his opinion each story had a natural size and should not have been compartmentalised into the sometimes rigid structure of a double page spread. In Picture Post stories extended to seven, nine or even eleven pages. The longest story in Picture Post was ‘How History Was Made in the Year 1938’. It ran for 28 pages, having 118 pictures with 8-line captions. Another reason for the magazine’s success was the use of series or themes. This device aimed at persuading the reader to buy the next issue. In the first twenty-eight numbers of Picture Post a 4-page colour insert on ‘Great British Masters’ showed amongst others the work of Hogarth and Gainsborough, of Constable and Millais. Sir William Rothenstein, following the the reproductions of his paintings wrote about the series, ‘It is admirable and of absorbing interest. You are doing something of permanent value with Picture Post...’ The first text series was a ‘Survey of British Institutions’ commencing with ‘The Press’ and the establishment including ‘The Church’, ‘The Army’, ‘The Bank of England’, as well as activities which were peculiarly British such as ‘The Public Schools’, ‘Christmas’ and ‘Cricket’. Other series included the ‘History of 100 Years in Photographs’, and ‘Medical Science’. With Lilliput Lorant’s aim was ‘to introduce the outstanding writers of the world to the English public’, while with Picture Post they originated mainly from England. Major series such as ‘British Writers have their say...including figures like J.B. Priestly questioning ‘Where are we going’, Sir Norman Angell talking about ‘Economic Madness’, and E. M. Forster on ‘Tolerance’. Following the outbreak of the Second World War, a new series, ‘What are our war aims?’ featured statements from influential politicians including: Attlee, Chamberlain, Macmillan and Stafford Cripps and literary figures such as H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw. In his article ‘Unite and Perish’, Wells acknowledges the magazine’s success. Picture Post aspires to be, and succeeds in being an open forum of worldwide resonance for the discussion of general ideas.’ Lorant’s layouts function best as double page spreads, with all the elements of individual photographs, text and captions brought together in the manner that an artist would bring together elements intrinsic to a painting. Pattern, texture and balance are all skilfully entwined. There are exceptions: major photo essays may start on a right-hand page, a single one-page essay may fit on a left-hand page. Lorant achieves this by placing advertising at the front or towards the back of the magazine. Unlike today the photo-essay takes prominence and is not merely a device to lead the eye through a hoard of advertising. Where there is advertising in Picture Post, particularly where half-page vertical advertisements fill the more expensive outside half of a page, Lorant uses the remaining editorial space to good effect. In the first issue Lorant invited his readers to participate in Picture Post by sending ‘letters and pictures, pictures of your own which are striking, amusing, original - everything except snapshots of a purely personal interest’. By the eighth issue, ‘What our readers say’ became firmly established with Picture Post replying to individual reader’s queries and as with readers’ pictures offered the additional incentive of one guinea for each contribution published. In an article celebrating the magazine’s first year it suggested that Picture Post gave readers their biggest surprise of all. It printed Readers’ Letters as they wrote them - with the minimum of editing and censorship. Readers could have their own views. They could have them in their own words, with their own spellings. They could abuse the paper as much as they wanted, and each other within the laws of libel... And they constitute one of the most lively, racy and entertaining cross sections of English life that has ever been published.’ From the occasional half page they grew until at times they occupied the equivalent of three or four whole pages. A letter in the eighth issue of Picture Post challenged Lorant’s editorial policies. The letter writer who signed himself William Freeman wrote: ‘As a journalist and author who of 35 years’ experience, I am moved to astonishment at the presentation week after week of pages and pages of totally unknown, totally undistinguished and worst of all - totally uninteresting people, plus the added infliction of the photos being repulsively inartistic... Lorant responded to the letter that he saw this as ‘a vital point at issue. Picture Post firmly believes in the ordinary man and woman; thinks they have had no fair share in picture journalism; believes their faces are more striking, their lives and doings more full of interest than those of the people whose faces and activities cram the ordinary picture papers. This goes for dictators and débutantes equally.’ British Fascists were also unhappy with the editorial policy of Picture Post and wrote: ‘You will pay for this Stefan Lorant. Hitler will put you in goal. We will dose you with castor oil and use the cane on you, then send you back to Hungary or Val-Halla.’ Lorant used the letters pages himself to write an open letter to Dr. Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda Minister, inviting him to write an article ‘of up to 2,000 words in length, setting out the Third Reich’s position and ambitions in the world today.’ Lorant guaranteed to publish the article in full and without comment. His offer was not taken up. By the end of the Second World War, when Tom Hopkinson edited the magazine, the circulation of Picture Post sank to about one million copies. It rose to 1,400,000 after the war ended. The price of the magazine was raised in 1952, first to 5d. and then to 6d. When sales slumped the price was reduced to 4d. with circulation rapidly falling. Picture Post’s competitor Illustrated, previously Lorant’s Weekly Illustrated, also at 4d. had a larger circulation than Picture Post. The reason why Lorant left England is not difficult to understand. The impounding of his bicycle was the first incident. ‘A day after it was taken away they confiscated my car as well. As I was living in the country I could reach my office only with difficulty. I was told by the police that I was not allowed to live in the country as I was an enemy alien, so I moved to the city, to the Savoy Hotel to be within walking distance of the office. Every Thursday I had to line up with other “enemy aliens” in the basement of Bow Street Police Station, where I was given a stamp in my little grey book. I was still the editor of the largest English magazine, with Nazi newspapers calling me Germany’s enemy No.1. If Germany were to invade England, I would be among the first people they killed.’ Lorant’s departure in July 1940 did not end his association with Picture Post. In 1950 Maxwell Raison wrote ‘you have always been very much missed by a few of us here’. This was followed by a telegram on October 7, 1950 which read ‘Can you come at once to advise on the immediate reconstruction of Lilliput stop Hope you might stop at least a month in London’. Lorant did not take up the proposal. The real problems were with Picture Post. In a handwritten letter to Lorant from Edward Hulton dated January 6, 1953 Hulton queried, ‘I have been wondering if you would consider the proposition of becoming again editor of Picture Post. The job would be for, say, two years minimum, and I am sure there would be no difficulty at all about salary.’ In his long letter Hulton says, ‘At all times, I not only recognised your exceptional gifts as Editor, but very much enjoyed our collaboration. Picture Post was, of course your “brain child”. It is my view that you are, certainly, the person best fitted to put Picture Post back where it ought to be on the map of the world.’ Despite continuing discussion, Lorant did not take up the offer. The negotiations did not remain private. In the Daily Mail on February 3, 1953, ‘Tansfield’s Diary incorrectly suggested Lorant would leave for London the following week and had been offered a salary of £35,000 a year. In a letter to Lorant in 1953, Sydney Jacobson could anticipate the demise of Picture Post. ‘Picture Post made its name by giving wonderful value for 3d. and having something to say. Present (1953) paper prices make 60 page papers impossible, and Huston’s constant interference and the lack of firm editing have destroyed the second quality... The Hulton’s are enormously suspicious of all the people around them, and change their favourites pretty quickly...The paper has some good photographers and writers, but lacks competent executives. Therefore it is shapeless and inconsistent.’ Lorant’s real position as creator of Picture Post was being marginalised only a few weeks after his departure for America. The September 1940 issue of Psychology has a portrait of Edward Hulton on the cover, and a long interview with ‘the famous publisher’ places Hulton firmly as Picture Post’s creator. He recalled that he had ‘his idea of publishing a picture paper for several years’ and had ‘thought about it, gathered material for it until it grew and took shape...’ ‘Everything was as I had planned - in twenty four hours my entire print first print of 750,000 copies was sold out. And since that time Picture Post has never looked back.’ In the whole article there is no mention of Lorant’s name. Not only did Hopkinson take over the position of editor on Lorant’s departure for America, over the years he increasingly assumed the mantle of almost being Picture Post itself. Ironically he was on holiday the weekend in 1938 when Lorant took Sydney Jacobson to Aldenham House where Picture Post was created. In his introduction to Picture Post 1938 - 50 (1970), Hopkinson’s recollections have sadly lost their sharp focus, though still acknowledging that ‘the original conception (of Picture Post) owed everything to Lorant.’ By the time his autobiography Of This Our Time was published in 1982 many recollections in relation to Lorant and Picture Post are wholly inaccurate. The media has continued to perpetuate these myths and fantasies. In what read as an obituary to Picture Post when published in The Times, Hulton is on record as blaming the magazine’s demise to increased costs and the changing demands of the public. ‘Television is doing so well much of the work we pioneered…’ Circulation of 1.75 million in the summer of 1939 had reduced to 738,000 a week in 1957. In a subsequent letter to The Times Gerald Barry saw it differently and more objectively. ‘It is cowardly and defeatist to put the blame on competition from television; all commercial ventures have to stand up on their merits to competition with rival media. Look, for example, or Life or Paris Match. The truth of the matter, as many qualified by experience to judge believe, is that Picture Post has failed over these later years because it has been deprived of its initial sense of purpose, and in consequence has been forced to snatch at successive shifts and improvisations in the attempt to hang on to a circulation failing for lack of resolute direction.’ Neither did Lorant see television as responsible for the demise of Picture Post. He says, ‘Life in America, Stern in Germany, Paris Match in France - they all survived. Picture Post died because it became dull and boring. It offered no new ideas. The issues in the fifties were carbon copies of the pages which were printed in the late thirties. The layouts were copied over and over.’ ‘If editors had gone with the times,’ Lorant says, ‘Picture Post would still be with us today.’ In 1991 the Sunday Times magazine published a series on The Thousand Makers of the Twentieth Century. Stefan Lorant, the creator of Picture Post was one of these persons, and was referred to as ‘the godfather of ’.

This article is based on continuing conversations with Stefan Lorant in his home at Lenox between 1991 and 1994.

The saga around the creation of The Real Story of Picture Post is recorded in my diary and published as Never a Dull Moment (Henwick Hill Press, 2013).

Michael Hallett interviews Stefan Lorant at his home in Lenox, Mass. March 1993 photo: Zki

Heinz K. Henisch (1922-2006)

Heinz K. Henisch was emeritus professor, physicist, photographer and author and one of the most eminent photographic historians of the late-20th century.

Having grown up in the Sudetenland in the former Czechoslovakia, Henisch left his homeland for England as World War II brewed in 1938. He met his wife, Bridget at the University of Reading, where she worked in the English department and he in physics. They married in 1960 and soon moved to the US where he became Professor of Physics and the History of Photography at Penn State University until his retirement in 1993. He penned eleven books, some on photo-history, some on physics and several on other subjects. First Dance in Karlsbad, published in 1993, chronicles his childhood memories of Europe. Henisch was a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and for him photography was a continuing passion.

Henisch was founding editor of the journal History of Photography. An ‘international quarterly’ first published in 1977 Henisch brought together a group of individuals on the International Board that collectively represented the best scholarship in photographic history of the day. Over the next 14 years he edited more than 50 issues continually extending the parameters of our established histories. He was always looking for new research and new researchers and he had the ability to find them in abundance. Many now established photo- historians, myself included, have Heinz to thank for first bringing their work to an attentive and articulate audience. Having survived an editorial process that was fair, firm and always helpful we became part of his coterie of corresponding colleagues. His best wishes at the end of any letter were always, ‘also from Bridget’.

Bridget A. Henisch was the other side of this remarkable relationship. She explained her husband’s interest in photographic history was driven in part ‘because it was a playground we could both share’. Outcomes of this liaison included the joint authorship of The Photographic Experience 1839-1914; Images and Attitudes (1994), The Painted Photograph 1839-1914; Origins, Techniques, Aspirations (1996), and Positive Pleasures; Early Photography and Humor (1998), all published by Penn State Press. In 1996, the American Photographic Historical Society honoured them for their work. Michael Hallett

Michael Hallett is a teacher, professional photographer and internationally published photo historian. His involvement with communication and media, and a career in the theory and practice of art & design education provides the environment for this storyteller’s use of words and pictures.

He has extensive experience in higher education including what is now De Montfort University, the Arts University Bournemouth, Manchester Metropolitan University, Birmingham City University and also as Visiting Professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, New York.

He has written continuously in the photographic press for over five decades. His biographical trilogy, Stefan Lorant: Godfather of Photojournalism, Never a Dull Moment, and A Hungarian in England brought Lorant's work to a new public. His 2019 book Being There (CrabApple Publications) is based on his interviews with photojournalists active since the introduction of the Leica in 1923.

As a cultural/photographic historian he is concerned with the images of others’ while with Bullring: the heart of Birmingham and his extended visual essay on the seaside he is increasingly immersed in his own photographic practice. His ‘Inconsequential Images’ explore the critical questions surrounding identity, influences, lifestyle, excesses, and the cult of the individual. With Birmingham being the home of the 2022 Commonwealth World Games his new project is for a series of publications with the working title of Birmingham: a great city.

The Michael Hallett Archive (collection ref: MS2342) including his Stefan Lorant Collection, is deposited at the Library of Birmingham, UK.