Previously unseen street photos discovered in suitcase

A set of fantastic photographs taken by John Turner depicting street scenes going all the way back to the 1930s have garnered a huge amount of interest.

After spending at least 30 years in the loft, they were discovered by John’s daughter Liz, and her husband Martin Carroll, and subsequently scanned.

Speaking to the BBC, Martin said, “Having a clearout last year, I started going through the case to weed out family photos worth saving. To my astonishment, I found I was pulling out one great image after another.”

Street life

John Turner was a property manager, but was a keen member of the local camera club in Bromley. It’s not known whether the photos found in the suitcase were ever shown to anybody else, but they’re a fantastic record of life in the 1930s-1960s.

The images depict a range of different places, mainly around London, but some were taken in Paris, where John regularly visited before settling down into family life.

Martin has been kind enough to share some extra photographs for us here at Amateur Photographer – he even tells us John himself was a keen reader of the magazine.

You can see a selection of some of John Turner’s fantastic imagery in the gallery below – and extra photos are available on the BBC’s story. Martin and Liz Carroll hope that the photographs can be arranged into an exhibition one day. Martin is working on getting some of the negatives found in the suitcase drum scanned (the current set were scanned on a high-end flatbed scanner).

It might be worth checking your own loft for any hidden photographic treasures that deserve to see the light of day – let us know if you find anything special!