British Preparatory Schools E-Book: Foreward
Figure 1.--We sought for our prep school book to capture informal images of the children througout the school day, both in and outside the classroom.
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The authors, two amateur photographers, set out to create a photographic essay of Britain. It soon occurred to us that this had been done before by more talented photographers than ourselves. One of the subjects we found interesting was the many wonderful parish churches throghout Britain and the graveyards nearby with tombstones dating back centuries. The churches often had huge books with the names of parishoners who died in the two world wars, especially World War I. Often the vicar would be nearby to tell us about his church. During one of these to a church in Devon , a nearby prep school attended a church service and the headmaster who we met afterwards invited us to their afternoon fete. We were fascinated by the event and the hradmaster invited us to photograph the school. It soon occurred to us that this was something unique. There are large numbers of school photographs, but most are formal portraits of the whole school or indivisual classes. Some photographs were taken in classrooms, but usually very stiffly done photographs of the children sitting in their desks often with their hands folded on their desks. Some schools even cleared the children out of the way and took photographs of empty classrooms and dormitories. We decided to compile photographic ssays of British schools, realistically depicting school life. We eventually visited about 100 different schools throughout Britain. We are extremely grateful for the headmasters and teachers who agreed to participate in our project. Most of all we are grateful to the many prep school children who enthusiastically participated in and contributed to our project. We hope that theu will be pleased with the final project.
