Robert Mayne: Children turn war torn London into their playground
A goalie dives for a football, a young girl cries alone, children clamber throughout the skeleton of a bombed out building.
A new exhibition of Robert Mayne’s photography at the Courtauld Gallery shows children running wild in the streets of post-war London.
Robert Mayne: Youth at the Courtauld – which runs until September 1 – features around 60 images of Mr Mayne’s iconic works.
An acclaimed British photographer with a keen eye for elusive detail, Mr Mayne rose to fame with his documentary images of working-class children growing-up in the mid-1950s and 60s.
His most famous photos were taken in North Kensington slums between 1956 and 1961.
Boys twist and turn on a heap of old mattresses, girls braid each other’s hair or dance in men’s jackets, looking lost in a world of rhythm.
His pictures show the then-baby baby boomers turning the dereliction of their war torn surroundings into a playground.
Self-taught and influential in the acceptance of photography as an art form, a duality runs throughout Mr Mayne’s work. He juxtaposes the harsh reality perceived by the adult viewer against the child’s playful innocence within the picture.
The boisterous street children also evoke a certain nostalgia for the childhood Mr Mayne never had.
Born in Cambridge to strict parents Mr Mayne was sent away as a boy to board at Rugby school before he went on to study chemistry at Balliol College in Oxford in the late 40s.
Mr Mayne, who died in 2014, was not a political photographer. His pictures were not intended to pity the post-war London poor but to capture living Londoners whose paths crossed his.
The second section of the exhibition reveals an almost entirely unknown selection of work from his later life.
They are pictures of his own family at home in Dorset, as well as those taken on his honeymoon in Spain in 1962. Children are still the focus, but now in a more personal, intimate way.
Youth is the first photography exhibition ever shown at the Courtauld Gallery in its 92-year history.
To book visit https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/exh-roger-mayne-youth/#&gid=1&pid=4
Pictured top: Men and Boys, Southam Street, 1959 (Picture: The Roger Mayne Archive / Mary Evans Picture Library)
Everyone at the South London Press thanks you for your continued support.
Former Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick has encouraged everyone in the country who can afford to do so to buy a newspaper, and told the Downing Street press briefing:
“A FREE COUNTRY NEEDS A FREE PRESS, AND THE NEWSPAPERS OF OUR COUNTRY ARE UNDER SIGNIFICANT FINANCIAL PRESSURE”
If you can afford to do so, we would be so grateful if you can make a donation which will allow us to continue to bring stories to you, both in print and online. Or please make cheques payable to “MSI Media Limited” and send by post to South London Press, Unit 112, 160 Bromley Road, Catford, London SE6 2NZ
