Restoration unlocks vision of Hebden Bridge photographer Alice Longstaff

‘People who knew her say she was a real force of nature’: one of Alice Longstaff’s photographs of Hebden Bridge. Photograph: Pennine Heritage

She was a working-class woman who took amazing photographs for 70 years, yet she is little known precisely because, some would argue, she was a working-class woman.

Alice Longstaff, who died in 1992, was well known in her home town of Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire but not elsewhere. Her fans hope a new book of her photographs will change that.