Casgliadau Arlein

Full title: Jean Straker, Photographer. Jean Straker was born in London in 1913. During the Second World War, Straker, a conscientious objector, worked as a photographer. Jean soon discovered how great the need was for detailed, speedy medical photography, particularly of surgical procedures. There were numerous emergency operations performed during the air raid years and operating techniques were changing and developing rapidly. Photographs, particularly those in sequence, were of the utmost value, as records and in the teaching hospitals as teaching aids. Abandoning commercial photography in 1951 Jean set up The "Academy of Visual Arts". Members had access to exhibitions resulting from its program of lecture-demonstrations. In 1951, he opened the Visual Arts Club at Studio House, 12 Soho Square, for "artists and photographers, amateur and professional, studying the female nude". Six years in 1961, officers from Scotland Yard, acting on a tip of from the Italian Police, visited Straker. In 1961, police raided Studio House and took a number of prints and negatives that they considered obscene. Straker stood trial in 1962, he defended himself and despite arguing that his photographs were "of artistic value", he lost the case and forfeited all the prints and negatives that were confiscated. But on appeal to The House of Lords this conviction was squashed. This case lead to changes in the Censorship Laws in 1965.