'Girl in a market, Almuñécar, Costa del Sol, 1962' by Roger Mayne
Roger Mayne’s documentary photographs, which he began producing in the 1950s, resonate powerfully across the years. Yet today his work is surprisingly underappreciated and the breadth of his practice almost entirely unrecognised.
Along with other artists who came to prominence in the 20-year period that followed the Second World War, Mayne has suffered from the tendency to see post-war Britain as something of a cultural backwater, with the art produced at that time overshadowed by developments in America and, to some degree, continental Europe. Equally, the art of the period has been too often perceived as a mere prelude to the flowering of Pop Art in Britain in the 1960s.
Nothing could be further from the truth. A nascent post-war art scene of young practitioners, significantly enriched by migrants from the former British colonies and refugees fleeing Nazism, emphatically broke with pre-war artistic conventions to make art that was profoundly moving and vital, and that had its own unique sensibility, heavily impacted by the Second World War and the global reverberations of its aftermath.
‘Beaulieu Jazz Festival, 1961’ by Roger Mayne
Post-war Britain was irrevocably changed by the conflict that had engulfed the world, as well as by its aftershocks – the Cold War and the turbulent struggles for freedom from the Empire. Most urgently felt was the need to rebuild Britain’s battered economy and infrastructure, but there was also, at a deeper level, a loss of faith in all prevailing ideologies and an uncertainty about the future.
Rationing continued until 1954 and swathes of grinding poverty blighted lives across the country. A pervasive conservatism, entrenched class divisions, endemic racism and sexism were all part of Britain’s very fabric, just as they had been before the war. Migrants and refugees were frequently met with hostility, and there was a widespread expectation that women, having enjoyed a new independence during the war, should now willingly return to hearth and home.
There was also, however, real hope for a better future: Britain was a nation traumatised but at the same time looking to be re-born. Artists made work that embodied both the enchantment of survival and a post-war unease. Through their practice they sought, at some level, to find meaning where moral certainties had been thrown into doubt, and, in so doing, heal society’s still-open wounds.
‘Teenagers, Soho Fair, London, 17 July 1958’ by Roger Mayne
Mayne was no different – his work was integral to this revival of creativity. Furthermore, he was central to documentary photography’s emergence in post-war Britain as a richly rewarding and valued art practice, in the face of widespread prejudice against photography’s legitimacy as an art form.
For a ten-year period between 1954 and 1964, Mayne achieved widespread recognition, principally for his powerful images of communities struggling with poverty against a backdrop of dereliction. This was a remarkable accomplishment for a young, self-taught photographer. Although Mayne came to photograph communities across the length and breadth of Britain – he was commissioned, for instance, to photograph factories, schools and housing estates in places such as Sheffield, Leeds and Nottingham – the critical reception he received then and has received since has tended to centre on a body of work made in a now utterly transformed pocket of London, Kensal Town, which lies on the northern border of Notting Hill, where it meets the Harrow Road.
‘Goalie, Brindley Road, 1956’ by Roger Mayne
Mayne’s principal focus was Southam Street, which at that time bisected Golborne Road, today a fashionable address lined with galleries, design shops and cafés. Mayne was drawn as though magnetically to the area’s crumbling Victorian façades, as well as to its intensely animated street life. He reputedly visited Southam Street on 27 occasions between 1956 and 1961, taking somewhere in the region of 1,400 images.
In his 1959 cult youth novel Absolute Beginners, which was in part informed by Mayne’s photographs of Southam Street, Colin MacInnes described the area as “nothing more than a stagnating slum” before adding: “It’s dying, this bit of London, and that’s the most important thing to remember about what goes on there.”
Three years later, The Observer Weekend Review published a feature entitled ‘Poverty and Poetry in W10’ that juxtaposed Mayne’s images with a new commentary by MacInnes. Here the author elaborated on his fictional description of the neighbourhood, describing Southam Street and the surrounding area as “a rotting slum of sharp, horrible vivacity”. It was, he said, “a place the welfare state and the property-owning democracy equally passed by”.
‘Children in a bombed building, Bermondsey, London, 1954’ by Roger Mayne
Mayne’s dedication to photographing this one street and its immediate neighbourhood was, and still is, extraordinary in the history of British photography. His extended interaction with the people who lived there, some of whom he befriended, foreshadows later developments within documentary photography, in which artists such as Chris Killip have sought to embed themselves in communities to engage with their subjects more meaningfully.
The environment with which Mayne engaged so intensively was not, however, to survive very much longer. Southam Street was finally demolished in the late 1960s, to be replaced by Ernő Goldfinger’s Brutalist landmark Trellick Tower – today, only a stub of the original street remains. That architectural transformation mirrors the wider forms of change that Mayne captured in his images during the 1950s and 1960s – the move from a society scarred not only by war but by lingering forms of pre-war deprivation to one that was marked by the consolidation of the welfare state and the drive towards urban regeneration.
All images Roger Mayne/Roger Mayne Archive/Mary Evans Picture Library
Roger Mayne: Youth, curated by Jane Alison, is at The Courtauld Gallery, London, until 1 September 2024. This is an edited extract from the exhibition catalogue.
The RPS Journal is available exclusively to members. Join us to receive our award-winning magazine and read more inspiring features. Explore full member benefits here.