Whippersnappers: How Children Became Photographers

Do you remember the first photos you took?

Whippersnappers is the first book to tell the history of children as photographers, from school societies in the 1880s, via post-war camera clubs and radical 1970s workshops, to the coming of digital cameras. 

Annebella Pollen how photography was presented and marketed to children — by film companies, comics, and teachers — and how the children themselves chose to use it. They include the girls whose trick photographs of the Cottingley Fairies first fooled, then angered, the nation; and the family given cameras and limitless film for a year by a Sunday newspaper.

Tracing photography’s movement from elite pastime to accessible hobby, including a wealth of photos taken by children — of pets and friends, teachers and toys, fairies and ghosts — it presents a unique child’s-eye view of the world, seen through the camera.

To be published: 25 September 2026

Snap Happy! How Children Became Photographers is at The Photographers’ Gallery from 14 October 2026 – 21 February 2027.

Annebella Pollen is Professor of Visual and Material Culture at University of Brighton, UK, where she researches undervalued archives and untold stories in art and design history. Her previous books include Mass Photography: Collective Histories of Everyday Life, The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift: Intellectual Barbarians, Nudism in a Cold Climate: The Visual Culture of Naturists in Mid-20th-Century Britain, More Than A Snapshot: A Visual History of Photo Wallets and Art Without Frontiers: The Story of the British Council, Visual Arts and a Changing World.