With the Tokyo Olympic Games suspended (originally scheduled for this month) and sporting events and facilities currently limited, we look to the past instead and examine how our ancestors and more recent relatives pictured their sporting hobbies and achievements.

By the time photography became established as a visual medium in the mid-19th century, some of our Victorian predecessors were already enjoying active outdoor pursuits. From the 1860s onwards, as photographic technology advanced, increasingly professional and amateur photographers recorded the sporting interests of the day.

Participating in sport purely for entertainment was initially a luxury restricted to an affluent, leisured minority: therefore the earliest professional sporting photographs typically portray gentlemen’s sports teams or elite public school and university college football, rugby, cricket and rowing teams. Amateur photography, a costly and time-consuming pastime for much of the 1800s, was also practised among the early-mid Victorian upper classes, so those of us with prosperous, privileged forebears may discover them in images displaying picturesque seasonal country house scenes such as leisurely games of croquet on summer lawns, or winter hunt or shoot meetings.

As the century advanced, organised sport steadily progressed, with local clubs proliferating, match rules becoming firmly established and physical pursuits beginning to be enjoyed by a broader cross-section of society. Outdoor photography in general also accelerated, following technological advances including convenient dry photographic plates and roll film photography – developments that benefited commercial photographers and also encouraged a new wave of middle-class amateur ‘snap-shooters.’

Late-Victorian sporting images reflect these trends, with popular scenes now including official football team photographs, groups of tennis players and local bicycle club outings inspired by the new cycling craze of the 1880s and 1890s. By then it was also becoming more common for sports enthusiasts to pose in their local studio with the tennis racket, bicycle, crossbow or other equipment that symbolised their sport. These items were often their own possessions, not always ‘props’ provided by the photographer, as is often supposed. Male clients, especially, became accustomed to changing their clothes in the studio dressing room, donning sportswear dedicated to their particular event, be it athletics, boxing or cricket.

Open-air photography and especially amateur ‘snapshot’ photography advanced rapidly during the early-twentieth century, with many individuals and families acquiring their first user-friendly box and folding cameras between the wars. Amateur photographers snapped away with enthusiasm, enjoying the chance to capture family members and friends participating in a variety of leisure activities and competitive sports. During the late 1920s and 1930s there also arose a more pronounced interest in healthy outdoor exercise and females began to take part in more of the active sports that had earlier been closed to their sex. These developments are directly reflected in family sporting photographs of the early to mid 20th century, which range from hiking and tandem-riding to golf and swimming at the new indoor pools and outdoor lidos springing up countrywide.

Additionally, school photographs began to exhibit more frequently the sports that were becoming an integral part of the modern curriculum, including popular team games such as hockey and lacrosse, and gymnastics and drill classes. Local sports clubs also continued to multiply, from lawn bowls and tennis to cricket and football; hence many of our photograph collections contain 20th-century sporting pictures taken on the green, court, pitch or outside the clubhouse. Conversely they may well depict earlier generations posing in the studio after a sporting triumph, surrounded by medals and trophies.

Finally, we should note that the armed services had long encouraged active sports such as boxing, fencing, shooting and polo, largely to help combat idleness and alcohol, encourage greater levels of physical fitness and to build unit cohesion. During the two world wars many of our more athletic relatives lined up proudly for formal photographs of regimental football teams, newly qualified PE instructors and other military group photographs, each member ordering his/her own copy of the photograph. Historically it was also common for sports teams to be formed in the workplace, a number of today’s football teams having originated with players drawn from among the staff of local mills and factories. Famously, during World War One, many munitions factories produced pioneering female football teams whose well-attended charity matches and team photos have gone down in history.