Wash-day blues, old King Coal and frock 'n' rollers

These photographs show a northern England that has largely gone forever, although the pictures were only taken in the 1960s.

They are the work of renowned photojournalist John Bulmer and feature in a 16-week exhibition which opens next Monday at the National Coal Mining Museum, near Wakefield.

Snapshots of life in Yorkshire are among those featured, including a photograph of two young ladies walking down a street in Elland, near Halifax.

Eating chips out of paper, one is grinning and the other half-scowling at the camera.

The exhibition is entitled Northern Soul – John Bulmer's images of life and Times in the 1960s – a reference to the newspaper which commissioned and printed the photos.

A pioneer of colour photography during the 1960s, Bulmer's work was included in the very first colour supplement – launched by The Sunday Times.

Inspired by The Times Special Issue entitled The North, the exhibition includes specially reprinted work.

From the early sixties. Bulmer travelled across the North of England recording everyday life in its industrial centres and in 1964 The Sunday Times commissioned a whole issue. It was entitled The North.

Its cover photo showed a woman pegging out washing in a scene that would not look out of place in an old episode of Coronation Street or one of the "kitchen sink" dramas popular of the time.

There are also photographs of miners in flat caps which, had they been taken in black and white, could have been mistaken for Victorian-era photography.

The decision to use colour, pioneered by The Sunday Times Magazine, created a new perspective for those who hadn't ventured this far north.

In a recent interview, Bulmer said: "It didn't occur to anyone to take the North of England in colour – that was considered a black and white subject."

Bulmer, now 71 and living in Hereford, told the Yorkshire Post that the North had an "exotic quality" which helped him produce some marvellous images.

"The people were all very friendly, very easy and relaxed. They were relaxed about being photographed."

He added: "I remember being in Huddersfield and Halifax. There was a real street life. The most impressive thing is that the cars didn't dominate the streets; kids played in the street and there was a relaxed, village atmosphere. The kids wandered into each other's houses."

While in the Black Country, he befriended a young steel worker who invited him to the pub. "He drank 17 pints of beer and I had 17 pints of of shandy. I could hardly stand up."

The words to the feature were written by Arthur Hopcraft, the sports journalist who wrote the acclaimed The Football Man, People And Passions In Soccer, and became an award-winning playwright with credits including the BBC TV adaptation of .John Le Carr's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

In an introduction to the article, the Sunday Times set the scene thus: "This issue is devoted to the North of England – the area north of a ragged line drawn across the country between the Humber and the Mersey.

"Southerners, on the whole, know little about it and tend to make wild generalisations about cobbled streets, coal mines and back-to-back houses. The North has an abundance of these. Some of it has changed little in the last 50 years. But restlessness and dissatisfaction with traditional values is, to quote a planning chief, changing 'the quality of life'."

Rosemary Preece, curatorial director at the mining museum, said: "We are delighted to be able to show John Bulmer's evocative images, which contrast black and white gritty realism with the sensitive use of colour. This exhibition will strike a chord with many."

The museum's curator of art and photography, Imogen Holmes-Roe, says Bulmer captured many of England's industrial heartlands, including the Black Country, Yorkshire and the North East during his travels in the 1960s.

"At the time Bulmer's images were used to show life in the North as different, more harsh than elsewhere," she says.

"Today, nearly 50 years later, Bulmer's photographs are seen as not sentimental but true to life. They reveal experiences that many can remember. As a collection they provide a unique record of ordinary life."

The exhibition runs from 25 January until 25 April and a Admission is free.

A PIONEER OF COLOUR IMAGES

John Bulmer has been described as a pioneer of colour photography.

He was quick to take up new technology ahead of many others who were working in London's Fleet Street.

Bulmer began his photographic career at the Cambridge University newspaper while studying engineering.

He then co-founded Image magazine, before starting work at the Daily Express in 1960.

After the Express, his reputation grew through regular magazine commissions which included Town, where he first began documenting the north of England.

In 1962, Bulmer began working for the country's first colour supplement, The Sunday Times Magazine.

At a time when photographers still preferred black and white, Bulmer welcomed the possibilities of colour. Even more groundbreaking was his decision to use colour for one of his most famous series on 'The North'.