Alec Wainman

Alexander Wheeler Wainman (1913-1989) was a British photographer, Quaker, and Slavonic Scholar at the University of British Columbia. He is most known for his work as a frontline medical volunteer for the Republican government and anti-fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War, and for the large collection of photographs he took during the war, which was published posthumously.

Early life and work Alec Wainman was born on 11 March 1913 at Otterington Hall, North Yorkshire, England. His father was a captain in the 2nd Battalion of the Worcestershire Regiment and was killed in Loos during World War I. By 1933, his mother had returned to England, where she lived in Shipton-under-Wychwood, Oxfordshire, an address which Wainman listed as his home during the 1930s. and was a member of the International Association of Friends of the Soviet Union.

Experiences during the Spanish Civil War Wainman volunteered for the Spanish Medical Aid Committee (SMAC) soon after it was founded, and was one of six ambulance drivers which left London for Spain on 23 August 1936 as part of the British Medical Aid Unit. Accompanied by life-long Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) activist Thora Silverthorne, Wainman helped to establish the first British hospital in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. He then found employment and accommodation for these former prisoners and lived together with his mother and the many Spanish refugee children which the Wainman family cared for.

Wainman’s collection of photos In 1975, a London-based publishing house got Wainman's photos with a view to publishing them but the publisher went into liquidation and Wainman's collection was believed to be lost. In 2013 his son John Alexander Wainman, known by the pseudonym 'Serge Alternês', salvaged his father's photo collection and published a selection, along with his memoir, in the book Live Souls.

Exhibitions Museum of the History of Catalonia 2019-2020: Beyond the trenches (1936-1939). Shows more than 150 photographs of Wainman from the Spanish Civil War.

Film Film Without you I would not exist.

Wainman's collection was also used in the BBC documentary The Secret of a Murdered Priest.