News
07 April 2012

Kenneth Box Photographs

Back in February 1994 my friends Mike Plumbley, Pete Tuner and I were carrying out research for our book 'Isle of Wight Rock' which was subsequently published the following year.

A relative of mine -David Chiverton - who grew up on the Island before he emigrated to New Zealand - told me about Kenneth Box.

David was a former pupil of Carisbrooke High School where Mr Box was an Art teacher. David clearly remembered Mr Box having a first class collection of photographs of the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival which he brought in to show to the pupils at the school.

With the help of a telephone directory, I found that Mr Box and his wife lived in Seaview and I arranged to pay a visit. Mr Box was very helpful and very kindly loaned me a wooden box containing about 100 slides. We later ended up - with Mr Box's permission -using several of these images in our book.

Unlike many other photographs of the festival, these are not of bands on stage. They are crowd shots, and as a result manage to vividly capture the atmosphere of the festival and some of the characters who attended it in a unique way.

Mr Box very kindly allowed us to take a copy of each of the slides. For many years ater our book came out. I kept them in an old shirt box in my house in Niton. Sadly, some have been affected by damp, but last year the idea occured to me that - with the permission of Mr Box - some of the images would be ideal to add to the permanent festival exhibition at Dimbola.

I spoke to Mrs Box on the phone, and my good friend Tony O'Nions spent many hours carefully scanning the slides and cleaning off the dust and damp that had got into some of them.

We are now delighted to see them on display at Dimbola.

Vic King