Two-part Luton album added to Chilterns photo galleries

An album of 62 captioned photographs has been added to the Chiltern Society PhotoGroup’s online gallery.

It records locations and life in the Chilterns and Alison Beck, who contributed all the photographs and captions in this album, said: “I have long felt that Luton was a strange omission from the PhotoGroup's portfolio.

"There has been some sort of settlement here since Palaeolithic times and Luton is now the largest town in the Chilterns as well as being one of the most populous towns without city status in the country. Luton possesses over 100 listed buildings, a beautiful Grade 1 listed church, and enough stories to fill a book.”

The project was somewhat thwarted by the pandemic and the petrol shortage so that Alison took the photos in Part One in February 2020 and then did not return until July and October 2021.

One of the founders of the Chiltern Society's PhotoGroup, Guy Patterson, wrote in 1996: “We want to record our towns as they are today so we are not looking for pretty pictures but informative records.”

Remembering that, the PhotoGroup’s website editor, Quiller Barrett, asked Alison to reflect the fact that 44 percent of Luton's population is BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) when she returned to complete her project. She ended up with over 350 photographs so the selection is a mere glimpse of a diverse and fascinating town.

See the collection on the PhotoGroup's website at: https://www.chilternphoto.org.uk/index/category/317