Los Angeles Portrait Studios, Edinburgh

Photo of a young man with an Alto Saxophone taken by Los Angeles Portrait Studios, Edinburgh.

The Los Angeles Portrait Studios was one of Edinburgh’s best-known commercial photographic studios during the first half of the twentieth century. Despite its glamorous American name, the business was firmly based in the Scottish capital, where generations of Edinburgh families visited to have formal portraits taken for birthdays, weddings, military service, engagements and family keepsakes. Thousands of these photographs survive today in family albums, often mounted on decorative card or printed in postcard format. 

The studio first operated from 75 Princes Street. It traded there from 1924 until 1946, before moving a short distance along Princes Street to 111 Princes Street, where it remained until 1956.

So the portrait would have been taken before 1947.

Like many portrait studios of the period, Los Angeles Portrait Studios specialised in carefully posed, professionally lit photographs. Customers could choose from a variety of presentation styles, ranging from cabinet prints to postcard-sized portraits, which were inexpensive to post to relatives and friends. The studio photographed people from every walk of life, including young children, newly married couples, soldiers in uniform, and multi-generation family groups. These portraits now provide an invaluable visual record of Edinburgh’s people, fashions and social history during the inter-war and post-war years. 

Today, original photographs bearing the Los Angeles Portrait Studios name frequently appear at antiques fairs, online auctions and in family collections. For genealogists, the studio imprint on the reverse of a photograph can provide useful clues about when and where an ancestor lived or visited Edinburgh. Since the business occupied known addresses during specific periods, the studio’s name can also help to date otherwise unidentified photographs. As a result, these portraits are valued not only as family mementoes but also as important pieces of Edinburgh’s photographic heritage. 

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The image on this page is licensable via ALAMY