Uncover objects from the Titanic, find out about life at sea and learn about the port of Liverpool.
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Uncover objects from the Titanic, find out about life at sea and learn about the port of Liverpool.
Maritime Archive and Library
Stewart Bale Ltd was a family run photographic practice specialising in commercial and industrial photography, based in Liverpool from c1911 to c1980, with an additional London studio, 1949 to 1970. The quality of Stewart Bale Ltd’s photography is high and the firm was regarded as one of the best amongst its contemporaries. The subject matter is broad but is particularly strong on architecture, shipping (launches and fit-outs), shops, industry and transport; it provides an excellent social history record, primarily of Liverpool and the North West but also nationally due to Bale’s extensive client base, making it a collection of national relevance and importance.
The Stewart Bale collection at the Maritime Archives and Library holds some 195,445 negatives (62,845 glass negatives & 132,600 film negatives) principally dating from around 1924 to early the 1980s. The film negatives are currently in frozen storage in order to preserve them and are, therefore, inaccessible. National Museums Liverpool is hoping to digitize this collection with external funding so that it becomes fully accessible and is in the process of planning this project.
The Stewart Bale collection is stored on a separate site and viewing is by appointment only. Please contact Anne Gleave to arrange this, by phone on 0151 478 4487 or send Anne Gleave an email. For a fuller profile of the collection please view our Stewart Bale Ltd information sheet.
The first major exhibition focussing on the Stewart Bale collection, Metropolis: capturing modern Liverpool, is at the National Conservation Centre in Liverpool city centre from 21 March to 10 August 2008.
A series of Stewart Bale online exhibitions has been added to the website to highlight the breadth of its subject matter, covering the following themes:
In 2006 we invited amateur and professional photographers who use the web service Flickr to recreate Stewart Bale photographs from our collection. Each of the photographers was given a seven day deadline to photograph their subject. In the resulting online exhibition, Stewart Bale 2.0 - documenting Liverpool you can see the original photographs from the Stewart Bale archive alongside the modern versions of the same scenes.
There have been a number of exhibitions of Stewart Bale photographs held at our venues, including most recently:
Photographs from the Stewart Bale archive have also been used to provide context for a number of local history exhibitions, including: