images: News UK Archives via Photo Archive News.
Recently passed at the age of 89, Sir Roger Gilbert Bannister was a British middle-distance athlete, doctor and academic who ran the first sub-4-minute mile. He is a true celebrity in the UK: in the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Bannister set a British record in the 1500 metres and finished fourth. This strengthened his resolve to be the first 4-minute miler, and he achieved this feat on 6 May 1954 at Iffley Road track in Oxford. When the announcer, Norris McWhirter, declared “The time was three…”, the cheers of the crowd drowned out Bannister’s exact time, which was 3 minutes 59.4 seconds.
The original Times coverage of that day had published a very famous cropped shot of Bannister exhausted crossing the finish line; but there is a nice follow-up story, recently published on Photo Archive News magazine and told by Michael-John Jennings, the Picture Librarian at the Times (News Licensing) photo archive. In facts, in 2014 he was able to retrieve in the archive the original set of negatives of the photo taken that day, including the full un-cropped version of the published image. As it was typical of the time, photographs were not often used in broadsheets; but this picture, seen now together with the other seven photographs, illustrate perfectly a moment in history. The Times photographer did a remarkable job capturing the race, in particular the finish line image, as most other photographers and reporters had been placed on the inside of the Oxford track: the photographer William Horton however was on the track itself, looking straight down the lens at Roger as he crossed the tape. And the famous shot was taken.
Understanding their storytelling potential, the whole set of negatives was immediately digitized and reused in a celebration article published later on the Times. After seeing the article, Sir Roger Bannister himself contacted the Times, and Michael-John and the photographer Jack Hill were invited to visit him, for showing the original plates and for an interview and a very nice new photo shoot.
Indeed, preserving a photographic archive is not only about keeping trace of the past, but also fostering new reuse of unique historical content, and the creation of new contemporary content.
Read the whole story on Photo Archive News: https://photoarchivenews.com/news/times-picture-librarian-meeting-sir-roger-bannister-remaining-6-glass-plates/
