To celebrate International Women’s Day, we take a look at the life and work of the pioneering Professor Margaret Harker who established the first photography degree course in the UK.
Born in Southport in 1920, Margaret Harker was a driving force behind photography and photography education. In 1940 she moved to London to study photography at the University’s predecessor the Regent Street Polytechnic, where she also began to work after graduating in 1943.
Her particular interest in architecture led to her being offered numerous commissions between 1941 and 1959, including photographing the Royal Festival Hall on London’s Southbank and the Sir John Soane Museum. She also photographed buildings threatened by enemy bombing during the Second World War, for which she was commissioned by the National Buildings Record. Many of her past works can be found in Historic England’s Margaret Harker Photographic Collection.
In 1958, Margaret became the first female president of the Royal Photographic Society and a year later she was appointed as the Head of School of Photography at the Regent Street Polytechnic, where she helped to set up the first degree course in Photography in the UK – the BSc in Photographic Science. In 1972 she became the UK’s first ever Professor of Photography.
Margaret had great enthusiasm for the promotion of the history of photography within the context of society. As well as her appointment at the Royal Photographic Society, she was an active member of a wide variety of photographic institutions, including as President of the British Institute of Professional Photography, Chairman of Trustees of the Photographers’ Gallery and a member of the Advisory Committee of the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford.
To remember her commitment to photographic education and her enormous contribution to the University of Westminster, a plaque was unveiled in 1996 to commemorate the establishment of the Margaret Harker Photography Centre at Westminster’s Harrow Campus.
More recently, in Margaret’s honour as their first female president, the Royal Photographic Society awarded 100 Margaret Harker medals, which were specially minted, to women at the forefront of photography. The awards were created as part of the Society’s international campaign ‘Hundred Heroines’, to discover and shine a spotlight on remarkable contemporary female photographers. The awards were followed by an exhibition in 2019 to showcase the photographers’ work.
Talking about Margaret and her legacy, Anna McNally, Senior Archivist at the University of Westminster, said: “From the opening of Richard Beard’s studio on our roof in 1841, the University of Westminster has been at the forefront of many developments in photography. We are fortunate to have many of Professor Harker’s files in our archives, which demonstrate her commitment to photographic teaching and the huge impact she had both here at the University and nationally.”
Learn more about the University’s history on the University of Westminster Archives website.
Find out more about Art, Design and Visual Culture courses at the University of Westminster.
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