- Venue
- Museum Of London
- Location
- London
The Museum of London has dived into its archive of photographs from the past 150 years to produce a most compelling collection of our capital cities streets. Over 200 photographs detail London’s streets and the relationship they have with the people who live on them, as well as the people that have passed through.
One quick walk around the exhibition and it is clear that there is a theme of documentation running through. Split into time periods, the exhibition begins with the 1860s displaying some of the earliest photographs known. Focus is mainly on still objects such as buildings, progressing onto busy street life and finishing in 2010 with the subject being people within the streets. Each section provides a different angle to London’s ever-changing life. Fleeting glimpses and momentary encounters are caught through the eye of a camera, together they make over a hundred years of history. Documentation may be a running theme but these street photographers have done so much more within their work, they have captured the core of our capital and its social history.
The photographs are displayed on the outer walls of the room and I felt myself getting caught up in a very ordered one way system, stopping and starting and shuffling with impatience waiting for the person in front of you to move on to the next photo. If you moved out of line you couldn’t get back close enough to read the tiny amount of wall text simply showing a title or artist’s name. At first the minimal description frustrated me, I wanted to know who it was in the photograph and what they were doing. Yet as I continued through I realised that this was precisely what I was meant to think, I let my imagination go and the images seemed to flow and link together and paint wider pictures about city life.
1930-1945 took me by great surprise. As I drew closer I was expecting photographs that reflected Britain’s struggle in the Great Depression and World War II yet there were little that actually told me anything about the time in which the people depicted lived in. The photographs were random and of things of very little interest to many of the visitors. For a period of time that in Britain has so much to tell, I felt disappointed. Artists focused on documenting the streets and pedestrians, for example Wolfgang Suschitsky who came to London in 1935 and began a portfolio of images recording life on Charing Cross Road. The images are interesting, yet most are titled unknown and show business men on their way to work, women on their way to the shops. Perhaps this simplicity was what the artist was trying to show. Even though there is so much suffering around them, people go about their daily lives normally, partly because they have to and partly, im sure, because they need and want to.
Take a quick break from staring at the walls and you notice a small display case off to one side of the room, not very crowded as many do not notice it. Inside it holds the key to all the photography on the walls. Camera ranging from an autographic pocket camera made in 1921 to an iphone 2 from 2007. A brief description explains how each camera works and it enables viewers to see how photography equipment has changed over the years. I felt the cabinet does not necessarily add anything to the exhibition yet it also does not impose on it, it is just some alternative viewing.
An earlier photograph which immediately stood out to me and remained prominent in my mind throughout the whole exhibition was ‘Magazine Seller’ by Paul Martin. It reminded me of the people we see standing by their stalls in the street today shouting ‘Free Evening Standard’ and ‘Pick up your Metro here’. A woman stands on the edge of the street with the unfocused hustle of London life behind her. She simply holds out a paper, waiting for someone to come. This photograph provided me with some form of comfort, street photography inevitably documents change yet, the clear parallel between the rush hours of London today and the 1983 portrait makes one feel that although centuries may pass, London and the people that make up its heart are never lost.
