Richards Brothers

A cold winter in the village of Madron, 1929.	The horse bus to Land's End ready to leave from Alverton Terrace, Penzance, c. 1880. Richards Collection Morrab Library Photographic Archive	The famous stranding of sixty Pilot Whales at Eastern Green, Penzance in 1911.

William Richards, founder of a dynasty of famous Penzance photographers, was born in 1835 and established himself in the photography business in the 1850s through his wife’s stepfather, William Jenkyn. The business was handed down from father to sons, through four generations, finally closing its doors in 1977. In a century and a quarter, the Richards family captured Penzance in all its aspects, from family likenesses to shipwrecks, civic events to townscapes. The majority of the family’s negatives are now in the collection of Morrab Library and this exhibition was curated in collaboration with their staff, using these holdings. The show was also in conjunction with the ‘Echoes’ oral history project, organised by Golowan Community Arts, whose collection of archive recordings provide background material to accompany the images.

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