Britain’s first deaf photographer - Walton R. Burrell (1863-1944)
As a deaf photographer, I also do ongoing research into the history of deaf photography so that my own practice is rooted in a deeper understanding of deaf history and culture.
As far as my current research goes, Walton R. Burrell (1863-1944) appears to be Britain’s first working deaf photographer.
Born in rural Suffolk, Walton grew up in a family that could afford to send him – and his three deaf siblings – to a small private deaf school in north London where he learnt to read and write (but not speak). At a time when school attendance was still not compulsory and most deaf children were illiterate, this gave Walton a head start in life.
Even so, ‘deaf and dumb’ people (as they were referred to in the Victorian era) generally occupied a low status in British life, so Walton had to defy prejudice and low expectations to find his own niche as a photographer.
In the 1880s, Walton was mentored by a local photographer and made his first images using an early Kodak wooden box camera (the first such device to be mass-manufactured and so available to small businesses and affluent families).
He soon began to depict scenes in and around Bury St Edmonds and sold enterprisingly sold postcards of his work to the locals.
Walton was prolific. Over five decades he made more than 20,000 photographs – family portraits, local street scenes, nature. His candid photos of soldiers at the local Army barracks and hospital during World War One makes him one of the most important local Suffolk photographers of his time.
On the home front: WW1 soldiers at play, West Suffolk barracks.
For the late-Victorian era, Walton was an outlier: not only Britain’s first working deaf photographer - whose best work captures the daily rhythms of rural Suffolk life - but as a founder-member of the British Deaf and Dumb Association in 1890 he was also an early advocate for the deaf community and challenged Parliament to improve their legal rights.
Thank you to Hannah Salisbury at Suffolk Archives for the opportunity to collaborate in this research. For further info, visit Deaf Perspectives.