The Photographer’s Gallery Soho hosts Roger Mayne’s photography collection

In 1956, an Oxford University graduate turned a corner into a west London High street.

Originally from Cambridge but living in west London, the young man had never ventured far from his neighbourhood before.

He was swallowed up by the sounds of children playing around him, women talking on doorsteps and men smoking and laughing loudly.

Roger Mayne took 64 photographs that day in Southam Street, Ladbroke Grove.

He continued to return to the same street for five years, visiting it 27 times and taking 1,400 negatives between 1956 and 1961.

The street has since been demolished to make way for Erno Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower.

Many of this first batch of Mr Mayne’s photographs were exhibited (alongside his pictures of Teds and street gangs) in Photographs from London, his first solo show at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in June 1956.

Mr Mayne, who died in 2014, was not a political photographer, his pictures of Southam Street were not intended to pity the post-war London poor but instead to capture living Londoners whose paths crossed his on that day.

The Photographers Gallery in Ramillies street, Soho, is exhibiting Mr Mayne’s photography collection.

The gallery pays homage to his travels across Britain from factories in Nottingham and council estates in Brick Lane and Sheffield.

The exhibition also includes the first recreation of his photo installation, The British at Leisure.

Roger Mayne will be hosted by the Photographer’s Gallery from March 3 until June 10.

Website: Roger Mayne: A Photographic Imagination | The Photographers Gallery

Kids on the street 1956 Picture: Roger Mayne