Convenient Bath 1982
Photograph
1982 (made)
1982 (made)
| Artist/Maker | |
| Place of origin |
John Heywood's candid photographs of children are essentially a record of everyday life, and over 100 of them were exhibited in 1990 at Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood (now the V&A Museum of Childhood). Some of the images in the exhibition showed gentle scenes, such as bathing the baby, a family outing to the park, or playing at home. Others went for the unvarnished truth, at least some of which was still considered fairly shocking when they were taken in the early 1980s - teenage parents with their baby, boys enjoying a quick cigarette on the bus to school. Others again might be considered inappropriate for exhibition just twenty years later - boys playing with quite realistic-looking toy guns, or a naked child paddling in the sea. This image is one of seventeen selected from the exhibits.
Object details
| Categories | |
| Object type | |
| Title | Convenient Bath 1982 (assigned by artist) |
| Materials and techniques | Photographic paper on card |
| Brief description | 'Convenient Bath 1982' black and white photographic print of a woman bathing a child in a kitchen sink:; paper and card, taken by John Heywood in England, 1983 |
| Physical description | Black and white landscape photograph mounted on white card. The image shows a small child being bathed in the kitchen sink, beneath the net-curtained window: the naked child, holding its right foot in one hand, and the mother, dressed in a quilted housecoat, are looking at each other and appear to be talking or singing together. Cutlery, crockery and a saucepan are stacked on the steel draining board to the left; plates, mugs, and a feeding cup, with the washing-up bowl, on the worktop to the right. In the background, four children's paintings are fixed to the doors of the wall-mounted cupboard. |
| Dimensions |
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| Marks and inscriptions |
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| Subjects depicted | |
| Summary | John Heywood's candid photographs of children are essentially a record of everyday life, and over 100 of them were exhibited in 1990 at Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood (now the V&A Museum of Childhood). Some of the images in the exhibition showed gentle scenes, such as bathing the baby, a family outing to the park, or playing at home. Others went for the unvarnished truth, at least some of which was still considered fairly shocking when they were taken in the early 1980s - teenage parents with their baby, boys enjoying a quick cigarette on the bus to school. Others again might be considered inappropriate for exhibition just twenty years later - boys playing with quite realistic-looking toy guns, or a naked child paddling in the sea. This image is one of seventeen selected from the exhibits. |
| Collection | |
| Accession number | MISC.1073-1992 |
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| Record created | July 1, 2009 |
| Record URL |
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