Activity: External talk or presentation › Invited talk
Description
Invited talk at West Pier Trust, Brighton.
Silhouette cutters were once a feature on all of Brighton's piers. They cut visitors' profiles on the Chain Pier in its earliest days and continued when Brighton became the home to one of the first photographic studios in the 1840s. On the West Pier, magician and entertainer Hubert Leslie cut more than 20,000 silhouettes of seaside holidaymakers in the interwar years. Arthur Forrester, meanwhile, used giant pruning scissors to create side views of Palace Pier tourists. By the time his studio closed in the 1970s, Forrester claimed to have cut a million faces. This talk casts new light on a 150-year shadowy seaside story, looking at what can be learned about Brighton cutters and sitters from this dark art.