Roy Reed At Old Billingsgate Market
I am giving my last lecture about the astonishing East End photography of David Hoffman this Sunday 8th December at 2:45pm as the finale of the Bloomsbury Jamboree at the Art Workers’ Guild.
In the week after the City of London Corporation voted to close Smithfield and Billingsgate Markets for good, I present Roy Reed’s photography of the Old Billingsgate Market from 1975.
Roy Reed took these pictures of Billingsgate Market when he was a twenty-three-year-old documentary photography student at the London College of Printing in 1975.
Roy’s enthusiasm for the subject was greater than the interest of the student journalist who asked him to take the pictures for a project on London’s dying markets. “When I suggested we get there early, she said, ‘See you there at eight,'” Roy recalled, rolling his eyes significantly. In the event, Roy got there at seven-thirty on a February morning and took his pictures just here as business was winding up at the nocturnal market. Nearly fifty years later, any disappointment Roy might harbour that the project was never written up and published is outweighed by his satisfaction in having taken these rare photographs of a lost world.
“It was nice chatting with the porters,” Roy remembered fondly, “No-one seemed to mind having their photograph taken – except maybe the guy in the tweed hat, you can see him looking at me suspiciously in the picture.” Taken at the time the market was already due to leave its ancient location next to London Bridge, Roy’s lively photographs comprise a fascinating record of a seemingly recent era in market life that grows increasingly remote.
Photographs copyright © Roy Reed
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I was 24 myself at the time these very precious and rare glimpses in black ‘n white were taken. There’s an extraordinary sense of capturing more than just a photo when it’s presented there to you in black ‘n white especially portraits and scenes like these that encapsulate a market due to leave its ancient location next to London Bridge.
I remember my times in China where we’d see whole swathes of hutongs disappear over night all in the rush for ‘progress’ – same in Singapore – only to see the rush decades later to recreate the essence of some of what was destroyed.
Unfortunately, that essence of Billingsgate Market life is lost forever in a day and age where a visit to such a market would be on many a visitor’s ToDo list.
Magnificent pictures Roy Reed, a real sense of joy in what has been presented to us here. Thank-you.
Is there a book by Roy Reed?Also is there a book on the new billingsgate porters?Many thanks Tony Hollington.
These photos reminded me that there are so many wonderful artworks depicting Old Billingsgate Market, from Ken Howard’s 1962 painting at the Guildhall Art Gallery, through three–that I can think of; he may have done more–by Thomas Rolandson, to a wonderful engraving from 1736 after a work by Arnoldus van Haeken. I’d have to do some digging to see if I could find the earliest artworks, but what a great perspective it could make, from the first paintings through the photographs of Roy Reed and Claudia Lesinger. And it would have to include the ones accompanying the interview with Charlie Casey… are those yours, G.A.?
I really like all of these, but the fifth photograph is particularly interesting to me, on a number of levels.
Thank you for displaying them all.