A bit of history…

David M. Smith’s business started life at 120 Marygate in rooms behind a plumber’s shop, when he left his post as Editor of the Berwick Advertiser in January 1951. Providing both written copy and photographs, this would have been very unusual at the time. Shortly after his departure from the Advertiser, his former chief photographer Denis Straughan joined him in his new business. Needing larger premises he then took an office above the Universal Building Society in Hide Hill which also gave him a small studio space. However, 17 Bridge Street became the business’s home in 1953 and until 2012 when it closed, this is the address most associated with the Photo Centre.

Customers would enter directly into the ground floor shop where cameras, equipment and film were sold. A staircase at the rear led to a large room on the first floor.

This became the studio where generations of townspeople and visitors had their portraits taken for family albums and passports. News stories were written and dispatched from the office on the top floor, where there was also a darkroom and negative store. A second darkroom was added in the cellar in the 1960s.

In the late 1960s, 17 Bridge Street was renamed ‘the Photo Centre’, a title that expressed the numerous operations of the business and marked a shift away from photojournalism into more commercial work.

In 1964 David’s son Ian officially joined the family business following firmly in his father’s footsteps with both camera and pen in hand. Ian had been writing articles and reports from childhood.

Over the years the Photo Centre staff included photographers such as Denis Straughan, Stuart Rennie, Eddie Sanderson and Stewart Gilbert to name but a few, shop assistants, telephonists and reporters. In addition to David and Ian Smith, David’s younger son David Jr, his daughter Ailsa and wife Charlotte also worked there. From the early 1980s, Ian’s wife Ellen was a mainstay of the business.