posted on 05 Jun 2016

Collins Colour Camera Books

​Let me take you back to the late 1940s in those first few years after the end of the Second World War. Britain is triumphant but in tatters, the end of food rationing is still half a dozen years away and we have a housing crisis. But it's not all gloom - we have a Labour government committed to the creation of the Welfare State and somewhere in the publishing world someone is thinking about children's books - and thinking out of the box.

Maybe it was the euphoria of the end of war or maybe the children's department in Collins were drinking too much but they somehow came up with the idea of Collins Colour Camera Books - a collection of extraordinary books for children based on classic childrens verses and fairy stories. Someone (please, please take a bow!) clearly thought that there wasn't much milage to be had out of doing the old traditional illustration thing and instead had the idea of taking doll models, posing them in a sort of stop-motion action and then photographing them to use as full page illustrations. This is inspired stuff.

However, it has to be said that the project didn't go fantastically well. Not only are these colour photographs the oddest hue, most of them have been clumsily touched-up to emphasise parts of the illustrations that don't work quite as well as they should. I suspect it wasn't only the bright spark in Collins who had had one drink too many when they created these books - I'm pretty sure the photographer wasn't, how should we say, fully functioning at the time.

However, the kitchness of these books are, with the distance of time, their glorious strong point. I can't imagine the modern young child being anything but puzzled by these products but I can honestly say they gave me a fabulous laugh and speak of a time long gone when this kind of thing was possible. In the super-professional land of modern day children's publishing these books would never be given house-room - which is, I think, a shame. Wouldn't you like to believe someone out there might just be thinking something like this might be a good idea?

Terry Potter

June 2016