Brislington Community Museum

Find the photographers

Around a century ago, more than five hundred photographs of Brislington and St Anne's were published as postcards. Already, nearly a hundred of these are online as exhibits, but we could do so much more.

Many postcards could be added as exhibits if we knew who took the photograph (so we can work out if the picture is out of copyright). The problem is - most postcards don't show the photographer's name, so we need help to make the breakthrough.

For example there may be a clue in the publisher - some were local shopkeepers - so we've listed the postcards by both place and name of the publisher (some photographers published their own postcards, but which?)

This outreach phase of our postcard project is time-limited due to the restrictions that make publishing these images possible, and is scheduled to end on Tuesday 01 September 2026.

Please follow the five links below to see the galleries of postcards we're trying to trace.


Gallery 1 - Brislington & St Anne's postcard publishers


The above gallery is a large file
so the following links may be more convenient...

Brislington Parish Church
Coe, E
Comer, A & J
Elson, L
Foster B'ton
George
Hollister, C & E
Parker, D
Red House, The
Village policeman
West, F & N



Gallery 2 - Bristol postcard publishers

Gallery 3 - postcard publishers outside Bristol

Gallery 4 - anonymous postcard publishers

Gallery 5 - unknown postcard publishers



More information on local postcards



Restrictions on publishing the pictures

For some years we've been preparing to apply for 'orphaned works' licences to publish postcards of Brislington where the copyright owner (if any) isn't known. Part of that process is to conduct research to identify a picture's copyright status. An initial phase enabled us to publish a good number online (postcards published already), but the status of many more remains uncertain.

An authorised avenue of enquiry is advertising for help in finding out about the origins and history of the pictures. When considering this, we felt a description was inadequate - people needed to see the pictures. But could we really publish a picture to find out if we can publish the picture?

Apparently, in certain circumstances, it is permissible. Having consulted with the administrators of the orphaned works application process, we've implemented some measures to safeguard the interests of any potential copyright holder, these include:


Ken Taylor