Jim Manning was 30 when he photographed his first Kennington wedding in 1949. In the rationed world of post-war Lambeth, cameras were expensive, and film virtually unobtainable. The wedding photograph was the one luxury newly married couples would splash out on, even if the church was a bomb-damaged ruin.
Recently demobbed, working out of his mother’s house in Newington and renting darkroom space in Brixton, Jim’s fledgling business took off and within three years he had opened a studio at 3 Windmill Row, Kennington. In 1954, he expanded into shop-front premises at 308 Kennington Road and started offering studio portraiture and baby photos alongside wedding photos.
Advertising and commercial images
In 1960, Jim’s teenage son, Frank, began working with his father. After graduating from the London College of Printing, Frank expanded the business into commercial photography for PR companies and advertising. Frank photographed many local businesses, institutions and celebrities. After Jim died in 1993, Frank ran the business for 30 years.
Manning studio archives
local Lambeth business Burroughs Distillery
Manning Photographers closed with Frank’s death in 2022. He had already arranged for its archive – half a million negatives together with all the original order books recording 72 years in the photography business – to be donated to Lambeth Archives. It’s Lambeth’s largest single photographic archive and probably the largest in London.
Manning’s studio archive offers a stunning visual document of change in Lambeth. The marriages in bombed out churches capture a mood of post-war optimism, as does the arrival of new communities – the Maltese, Caribbean, Portuguese, and West African families who all visited Mannings to be photographed.
The changing face of Lambeth
Photo for the Children’s Society by Frank Manning
The Mannings’ photos record the changing streetscapes of Kennington and many now vanished local businesses and institutions like the NAAFI, the Children’s Society, Burrough’s Gin, the Alford boys club, The Fitzroy boxing club, and Brixton synagogue. Frank’s commercial photography means that visiting royalty, celebrities and politicians – the Dianas and the Blairs – were also captured smiling for Frank’s camera alongside the people of Kennington.
Exhibition at Lambeth Archives
- To celebrate the survival of this extraordinary archive, the exhibition, A Vanished Kennington: the studio archive of Manning Photographers, is showing at Lambeth Archives from 15 July until 16 August 2025. See website for opening hours.
- See more from the Manning Archive at Lambeth Archives image website.
- Enquiries & information archives@lambeth.gov.uk
- Please credit “Lambeth Archives” if you use any of the photos.
