Grace Robertson

British photojournalist (1930–2021)

Grace Robertson (13 July 1930 – 11 January 2021) was a British photographer who worked as a photojournalist, and published in Picture Post and Life. Her photographic series, including "Mother's Day Off" (1954) and "Childbirth" (1955), mainly recorded ordinary women in postwar Britain. Robertson's work is held in the collections of the National Galleries of Scotland, Science Museum Group, Tate and Victoria and Albert Museum.

Robertson was born in Manchester, England, in 1930, to the journalist Fyfe Robertson and his wife Elizabeth (Betty; née Muir). Both her parents were born in Scotland, and Robertson described herself as Scottish in a 2010 interview with The Scotsman. She became interested in photography in 1948 and, in 1949, her father gave her a Leica camera. In 1952, she photographed the Bluebell Girls in Italy, Working as a freelancer throughout her career, her best known series, "Mother's Day Off", documented working class women from Bermondsey in London, enjoying a day out in Margate, and was published in Picture Post in 1954. The middle aged to elderly subjects are depicted dancing, drinking and on a fairground ride. She was commissioned to shoot a similar series featuring women from Clapham for Life magazine in 1956. After retiring from teaching, she started to paint during the 1980s. In 1992, the BBC commissioned a programme from her about ninety year olds. Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian, characterises Robertson's work as recording ordinary women in postwar Britain, and describes her as a "proto feminist".