Extended exhibition run for Leeds success

Such has been the success of 'A Lasting Moment: Leeds 1954' by Marc Riboud at Leeds City Museum that it will now run until 28 June 2009. The original closing date was 30 March. You only have to look at the photographs to realise why so many visitors want to see the exhibition.

Boys playing cricket at Victoria Place in Little London. © Marc Riboud/Courtesy HackelBury Fine Art, London, www.hackelbury.co.uk, ‘A Lasting Moment: Leeds 1954 by Marc Riboud at Leeds City Museum (until June 28 2009), www.leeds.gov.uk/ citymuseum.

A girl pushing a toy pram on Melrose Street in Burmantofts. © Marc Riboud/Courtesy HackelBury Fine Art, London, www.hackelbury.co.uk, ‘A Lasting Moment: Leeds 1954 by Marc Riboud at Leeds City Museum (until June 28 2009), www.leeds.gov.uk/citymuseum.

Marc Riboud, then a young photographer learning his trade, took pictures of Leeds in 1954 when he was working for Picture Post magazine: the pictures were for a series about the best and worst of ten English cities. The exhibition came about when history lecturer, Janet Douglas, spotted some photos in a Saturday newspaper. She inquired about them and found hundreds more images from the same shoot had been left undeveloped for 50 years at a London photo agency. They had just been found again, half a century later, in an office clear-out. For a historian, this was like striking gold: 'The pictures capture locations long since demolished, and paint a picture of a much-changed way of life'. Fifty years later, Marc Riboud was more than pleased to see the photos turn up again: 'It was like a memory pulling me back, to see a photograph and another photograph, brought out another and another memory'. Unfortunately he had no record of who and where he photographed, so the exhibition's organisers have appealed to the people of Leeds for help and are hoping to find some of the children photographed in the streets of Leeds in 1954.

'A Lasting Moment: Leeds 1954' by Marc Riboud runs at Leeds City Museum, Millennium Square, Millennium Square, Leeds LS2 8BH, until Sunday 28 June 2009. Open: Tue–Fri 11am–6pm (Thu 8pm), Sat & Sun 11am–5pm, Bank Holiday Monday 11am–4pm. Admission is free to the Museum, but ?2 (?1 concessions, free Thu 6–8pm) to 'A Lasting Moment'. Tel: 0113 2243732, www.leeds.gov.uk/lastingmoment/

20 April 2009