Poor kids, what chance have they got? Back in the 1950s, influential British street photographer Roger Mayne looked at the world that we bring children into and despaired. His images of brutally deprived Southam Street near Notting Hill capture children playing, living in a London of squalor, filth, poverty and division.
His photos are stark, high contrast, quick, dramatic, bare. A kid lies on the window sill of a derelict house, a gang of tots peers out of the busted windows of a bombed-out building, others scale crumbling walls or balance on collapsed roof beams. There’s so much joy and playfulness in this misery, and all captured with incredible compositional nous.
Most of the works are from the mid-’50s up to 1957. In ’58, the Notting Hill riots would tear the area apart even more. The black kids and white kids interact here, they’re neighbours, but what a grim world they were entering.
The show also features lesser-known Mayne work from later in life. He moved to the seaside, had kids, then his kids had kids. Children are still the focus, they’re still vessels of hope, but now in a more personal, intimate way. The images are less striking, far less impactful, than the street scenes. They’re family snapshots. Beautifully taken family snapshots, by a great photographer, but still just family snapshots.
Maybe all the bleakness became too much, maybe he couldn’t face the filth and sadness any more, maybe he just needed to go to the country and watch his kids grow up. Who can blame him?