Dressed in their best clothes, the glint of a gold watch visible beneath the sleeve of a smart suit, they posed for the cameras at Bradford’s Belle Vue Studio.

Between the 1950s and 1970s, the studio was widely used by people from the city’s newly-arrived migrant communities who had formal photographs taken, to send to family back home.

Formal, traditional poses favoured by the studio appealed to this new clientele, and props were used as visible signs of success. Watches displayed on wrists symbolised wealth, sunglasses and cigarettes oozed Western sophistication, and a pile of books represented education.

Although nearly all the men worked in mills or on public transport, briefcases were carried proudly and rows of pens lined top pockets, as symbols of clerical employment.

When the Manningham studio closed in 1975, thousands of glass negatives were thrown away, but some were left in the cellar where they remained until 1983 when the building was emptied. Around 17,000 of the negatives were retrieved and are now stored in the archives of Bradford Museums and Galleries.

Enter Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller, who has put some of the images on display.

Part of Bradford’s photographic festival Ways of Looking, the exhibition is called Poking About because, says Jeremy, that’s exactly what he’s been doing.

When invited by Bradford Museums and Galleries to produce an exhibition using its photographic archives, he chose portraits because, he says, “people are interested in people”.

A conceptual artist who has worked with Andy Warhol, Jeremy explores Britain’s cultural heritage in art projects involving ordinary people.

In Poking About, he uses images from the Belle Vue Studio, the Telegraph & Argus, Bradford Heritage Recording Unit and private donations to create a fascinating glimpse into social history, showing how the lives of ordinary Bradfordians have changed from Victorian times onwards. Many of the photographs have gone on display for the first time.

Archive images include the first car in Bradford – an Arnold Benz driven by Albert House – and a pre-war Manningham Mills ladies’ football team.

Jeremy has also made a stained glass window using 19th century magic lantern slides from Bradford’s Industrial Museum. Images depicting cartoon characters, wild animals in jungle scenes and European cities are projected on to the window using gas light.

The Belle Vue photographs offer a particularly intriguing glimpse of Bradford’s black and Asian communities in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies.

Established in 1902 by photographer Benjamin Sandford Taylor, the studio opened on Manningham Lane in 1926.

After Taylor died in 1953, his assistant Tony Walker took over, just as large numbers of immigrants from Asia and the Caribbean were settling in Bradford.

In the photographs, men, women and children strike a formal pose against a heavy curtain backdrop. Two young men, possibly brothers, stand side-by-side in matching checked suits; two girls smile awkwardly in neatly-pressed Girl Guide uniforms; a man in a cowboy-style tassled shirt strikes a self-conscious pose; and a woman in traditional Pakistani clothes, clutching a handbag, sits beside her young son in a striped tanktop with neatly-combed hair.

While some Asian people are in traditional clothes, others show off Western influences. A couple of young men with shoulder-length hair sport open-necked shirts with wide lapels, flared trousers with big-buckled belts and platform boots; a man in shorts strikes a bodybuilder pose; and a young couple are dressed for a dance, she in a circle skirt and he in a smart Fifties suit. In several photographs, the same blonde girl in strappy shoes appears, posing each time with a different man.

“It looks like she was used as a ‘prop’, to give the impression the sitter had an English girlfriend,” says Jeremy, 45. “The poses are very formal, they show how little moved on from Victorian times in terms of portrait pictures. Some local newspaper pictures still follow those rules.

“Because photography is so accessible now, even on mobile phones, there isn’t so much demand for formal portrait pictures. Now people take pictures all the time. From birth to the age of about eight, I only had a handful of photographs taken of me, but now friends of mine are always taking photos of their children.”

Also featured in the exhibition are images from Bradford Heritage Unit, which documented people and places in the city from 1983 to 2003.

Among the images projected on to a wall are gravediggers at Undercliffe Cemetery in 1906; a March Against Racism in 1985; Ukrainian Christmas celebrations; the 1908 Legrams Mill disaster; a 1912 children’s matinee at Elysian Palace, Lidget Green, and a teenager’s bedroom from 1986 depicting a wall covered in Duran Duran posters.

Jeremy brings his ‘poking about’ in Bradford’s cultural history up to date by pinning recent T&A cuttings to a wall. “They are the archive of the future,” he says.

Poking About runs at Bradford 1 Gallery, Centenary Square, until November 27. Jeremy Deller will be giving a talk at the gallery on Sunday.