An exhibition at The Lowry features Harry Hammond’s images  from the dawn of rock ‘n’ roll. Dan Feeney applauds a simpler, more innocent time in popular culture.

‘Showbiz.’ What a horrible term. The modern predilection for celebrity culture sees‘news’ of the exact movements of each star dominating the British press. Be it a reality television star switching on the Christmas lights in Kidderminster or a D-list television personality attending the premiere of the latest festive CGI film, the press apparently reacts to the whims of both the talent and the public. It all seems so, well, empty.

It’s a very different world on show at The Lowry’s new exhibition The Birth of British Rock: Photographs by Harry Hammond. Hammond captured some of the defining images of the real stars of British music from the 1940s to 1960s, with iconic shots of The Beatles, Cliff Richard, The Rolling Stones, Shirley Bassey and Lonnie Donegan throughout this touring collection from the V&A’s Department of Theatre and Performance.

As lead photographer for the re-launched New Musical Express in the 1950s, Hammond engaged with the burgeoning rock-‘n’-roll scene, developing relationships with these hep cats whilst his contemporaries shunned them, reckoning rock was a short-lived teen phase. Andrew Loog Oldham, the former manager of the Rolling Stones, remembers:  “He always stood out away from the other snappers who loathed us, wished us no good, and couldn’t wait to get back to snapping Vera Lynn.”

When Hammond died at the age of 88 in 2009, some obituaries suggested that his photographs of this period in British cultural history created icons, acknowledging the role the visual image plays in the act of memory. Such was the importance of his work that the V&A acquired his collection in the 1980s to preserve for the nation this sea-change in British culture. Harry Hammond’s bold images capture the essence of the 1950s: hope, energy and youthful enjoyment.

This exhibition brings together more than one hundred of Hammond’s images, alongside audio from the era, to transport viewers back to the era of sharp-suits, slicked-back hair and hoop-skirts. One wonders whether images of today’s pop culture celebs will be deemed gallery-worthy in fifty years’ time.

The Birth of British Rock: Photographs by Harry Hammond, The Lowry until 10 April. Free. A book, Halfway to Paradise: The Birth of British Rock by Alwyn W Turner, has been published to accompany the exhibition. Images: (from top) Little Richard, Cliff Richard, Shirley Bassey, The Beatles.