Midwinter At Christ Church, Spitalfields
The shortest day of the year approaches on Wednesday 21st December, when at forty-seven minutes past nine we pass the solstice taking us back towards shorter nights and longer days. At this time when the sun is at its lowest angle, Christ Church Spitalfields can become an intricate light box with powerful rays of light entering almost horizontally from the south and illuminating Nicholas Hawksmoor’s baroque architecture in startling ways. Yesterday’s crystalline sunlight provided the ideal conditions for such phenomena and inspired me to attempt to capture of these fleeting effects of light.
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Robson Cezar’s Whitechapel Houses, 2022
Spitalfields artist Robson Cezar has been collecting wooden fruit crates in Whitechapel Market on the way to his studio in Bow again, and making them into little wooden houses.
Each one is a day’s work for Robson and many are recognisable as inspired by buildings around the East End. Photographer Sarah Ainslie visited him in his studio this week to document his creations. Every one is different and each comes with an LED light and battery.
We are selling them on a first-come-first-served basis, so if you would like one please email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com giving your first, second and third choice, and we will supply payment details. We can only post these within the United Kingdom.
ALL ROBSON’S HOUSES ARE SOLD BUT HE WILL MAKE YOU ONE TO ORDER IF YOU DROP US A LINE!
These houses are sculptures not toys and we do not recommend them for children under the age of twelve.
Robson Cezar – ‘These empty boxes are full of the good and true things of life …’
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
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Charles Goss’ Vanishing City
This Thursday 15th December at 6:30pm, I shall be giving a reading in company with my good friends, the novelist Sarah Winman and the poet Stephen Watts at Burley Fisher Books in Dalston, 400 Kingsland Rd, E8 4AA. Tickets are free – click here to book
33 Lime St
A man gazed from the second floor window of 33 Lime St in the City of London on February 10th 1911 at an unknown photographer on the pavement below. He did not know the skinny man with the camera and wispy moustache was Charles Goss, archivist at the Bishopsgate Institute, who made it part of his work to record the transient city which surrounded him.
Around fifty albumen silver prints exist in the archive – from which these pictures are selected and published for the first time today – each annotated in Goss’ meticulous handwriting upon the reverse and most including the phrase “now demolished.” Two words that resonate through time like the tolling of a knell.
It was Charles Goss who laid the foundation of the London collection at the Institute, spending his days searching street markets, bookshops and sale rooms to acquire documentation of all kinds – from Cries of London prints to chapbooks, from street maps to tavern tokens – each manifesting different aspects of the history of the great city.
Such was his passion that more than once he was reprimanded by the governors for exceeding his acquisition budget and, such was his generosity, he gathered a private collection in parallel to the one at the library and bequeathed it to the Institute on his death. Collecting the city became Goss’ life and his modest script is to be discovered everywhere in the archive he created, just as his guiding intelligence is apparent in the selection of material that he chose to collect.
It is a logical progression from collecting documents to taking photographs as a means to record aspects of the changing world and maybe Goss was inspired by the Society for Photographing the Relics of Old London in the eighteen-eighties, who set out to photograph historic buildings that were soon to be destroyed. Yet Goss’ choice of subject is intriguing, including as many shabby alleys and old yards as major thoroughfares with overtly significant edifices – and almost everything he photographed is gone now.
It is a curious side-effect of becoming immersed in the study of the past that the present day itself grows more transient and ephemeral once set against the perspective of history. In Goss’ mind, he was never merely taking photographs, he was capturing images as fleeting as ghosts, of subjects that were about to vanish from the world. The people in his pictures are not party to his internal drama yet their presence is even more fleeting than the buildings he was recording – like that unknown man gazing from that second floor window in Lime St on 10th February 1911.
To judge what of the present day might be of interest or importance to our successors is a subject of perennial fascination, and these subtle and melancholic photographs illustrate Charles Goss’ answer to that question.
14 Cullum St, 10th February 1910
3, 4 & 5 Fenchurch Buildings, Aldgate, 28th October 1911
71-75 Gracechurch St, 1910
Botolph’s Alley showing 7 Love Lane, 16th December 1911
6 Catherine Court looking east, 8th October 1911
Bury St looking east, 3rd July 1911
Corporation Chambers, Church Passage, Cripplegate, 31st January 1911 – now demolished
Fresh Wharf. Lower Thames St, 28th January 1912
Gravel Lane, looking south-west, 11th October 1910
1 Muscovy Court, 5th June 1911
3 New London St, 28th January 1912
4 Devonshire Sq
52 Gresham St, 17th September 1911
9-11 Honey Lane Market, Cheapside, 16th October 1910
Crutched Friars looking east from 37, 11th February 1911
Crutched Friars looking east, 28th October 1911
35 & 36 Crutched Friars, 28th January 1912
Yard of 36 Crutched Friars looking north, 11th February 1912
Yard of 36 Crutched Friars looking south, February 11th 1912
Old Broad St looking south, 24th July 1911
Charles Goss (1864-1946)
Photographs courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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and see more of Goss’ photography
Chris Kelly’s Columbia School Portraits, 1996
It is my pleasure to publish Chris Kelly‘s portraits of an entire class at Columbia Primary School, Columbia Rd, Bethnal Green. Distinguished by extraordinary presence and insight, these tender pictures taken a quarter of a century ago are the outcome of a unique collaboration between the photographer and the schoolchildren. Chris has been taking photographs for education and health services, and voluntary organisations in the East End for almost thirty years, and these astonishing timeless portraits illustrate just one aspect of the work of this fascinating photographer.
I like myself because I am smart and cool and my name is Rufus and Rufus means red one and I really like to play with my friends.
My name is Abdul. I am eight years old. I was born in 7.10.88 and I like trainers called keebok classic.
When I grow up I want to be a singer and travel around the world. My name is Jay and I am eight years old.
My name is Imran. I am eight years old. I like going to school. I like drawing. My sister Happy gives me sweets.
Hello my name is Salma and I was born in 1988. I am eight years old. I like to go to Bangladesh. At school I like Art. I go to Columbia Primary School. And my teachers name is Lucy.
I like myself because I am smart and cool. My name is Ibrahim. My age is eight years old.
My name is Jamal. I go to Columbia School and I am eight years old. I enjoy reading and art and the new book bags. I am special because there are no other people like me.
I’m eight. I like to play. My mummy loves me. My name is Shumin.
I am special because I am good at reading and maths. I am good at running. I am eight years old and I am year three. My address is London E2. My best friend is Rokib. My name is Kamal.
My name is Kamal Miah. I like chocolate cake with chocolate custard. I love computers at home. I learn at Columbia School. Before school I drink fizzy drink and I eat chips. My date of birth is 13.10.88. My best chocolate bar is Lion. My best colour is dark blue. I’m good at maths. Speling group is C.
I am eight years old. My name is Nazneen. I like doing maths and I like doing singing. I have three sisters. And I have lots of friends.
My name is Paplue. I like football and I like fried chicken because they give me chicken. I am eight.
My name is Rahima. I was born in October the eleventh. I’m eight years old. I go to Columbia School. I live in number thirty.
My name is Halil. I am eight years old. I like to play with my three game boys. I like to see funny films.
My name is Litha. I like chocolate. I was born in London. I am eight years old. I live in a flat. When I grow up I want to be a hairdresser.
My name is Robert. I am eight years old and I live in London E2. I like where I live because I have lots of friends to play with.
My name is Rajna. I’m good at running. I do writing at home. And I’m the middle sister.
I am eight years old. I go to school. I play in the playground and my name is Dale.
My name is Sadik. I’m eight years old. I am quite good at football. I practise with my uncle.
My name is Rokib, I am eight years old. I am special because I can read and write and I can do maths and I can be thoughtful and helpful.
My name is Shafia. I am eight years old. I have two sisters. My big sister is called Nazia and my baby sister is called Pinky.
My name is Shokar. I like kick boxing and swimming and I like football.
My name is Urmi and I like going to Ravenscroft Park. I have a black bob cut, browny skin and black eyes. I am eight years old.
My name is Wahidul. I am eight years old. My favourite prehistoric animals are dinosaurs and I like reading and science.
My name is Yousuf. I want to be a computer designer. If I want to be a computer designer I have to be an artist as well.
My name is Ferdous. I am eight years old. I go to Columbia School. My favourite thing is playing games. My date of birth is 10.12.88.
My name is Akthar. I like to go to Victoria Park. I am eight years old.
Hello my name is Fahmida. I am eight years old and I was born in 1989. I like to play skipping and Onit. I like going to school. In school I like Art.
I go to play out with my friends. I go to the shops with my mum. I go to my sisters new house. My name is Ashraf and I’m eight years old.
My name is Fateha. I go to school. I like art. I am eight years old. I am lucky that I’ve got a good art teacher.
Photographs copyright © Chris Kelly
Chris Kelly hopes to make contact with the subjects of these pictures again for the purpose of taking a new set of portraits. So, if you were one of these children, please get in touch with chriskellyphoto@blueyonder.co.uk
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Night At Spitalfields Market
Although they were taken only thirty years ago, these photographs by Mark Jackson & Huw Davies preserved in the archive at Bishopsgate Institute, seem now to be images from the eternal night of history – with fleeting figures endlessly running, fetching and carrying, pushing barrows from the flaring lights out into the velvet blackness, where a bonfire burns beneath the great tower of Christ Church, Spitalfields, looming overhead.
Mark Jackson & Huw Davies were poets with cameras, aware that they were in an epic world with its own codes and customs, and they recognised the imperative to record it before it disappeared. No one asked them and no one paid them. As recent graduates, Mark & Huw shared a tiny flat and worked, as a courier and in a restaurant respectively, to buy film and subsidise their project. Each evening they took the last tube to Liverpool St Station and spent the night at the market, taking pictures and befriending the traders, before going straight back to work again in the morning, often without any sleep.
Like many of the most inspiring cultural projects, this remarkable body of photography was the result of individuals pursuing their own passion. Mark & Huw were committed to record what no one else was interested to look at. Neither became photographers and their greater project to record all the London markets was reluctantly abandoned when they went off to pursue other careers, but their Spitalfields Market photographs are unrivalled in the photography of markets.
Photographs copyright © Mark Jackson & Huw Davies
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Mark Jackson & Huw Davies at the Spitalfields Market
Ivor Robins, Fruit & Vegetable Purveyor
Snowmen Of Yesteryear
With snow forecast in the capital, I thought I would look back and consider the transient souls of those long-gone East End snowmen of yesteryear that I was able to immortalise with my camera.
At first I came upon them in yards and gardens, but before long they were scattered all over the parks and open spaces, lonely sentinels with frozen smiles. Snowmen are short-lived beings and many of those I photographed were just completed, only to be destroyed shortly after my pictures were taken. Yet when I returned later, I often found they had been reconstructed, and – as others appeared in the vicinity and the creators sought to be distinctive – a strange kind of evolution was taking place.
Chris Brown, Illustrator
Chris Brown has long been a favourite illustrator with his superlatively elegant and droll linocuts (currently gracing branches of Gail’s Bakery for Christmas), so I am thrilled that he is exhibiting and giving a lecture about his work at the BLOOMSBURY JAMBOREE at the Art Workers Guild tomorrow, Sunday 11th December from 10:30am.
CLICK HERE TO BOOK FOR CHRIS BROWN’S LECTURE AT 12:15pm ON SUNDAY
We need volunteers at the Jamboree on Sunday – if you can help, please email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com
WHAT WE DO TODAY EXISTS BY WHAT WE DID YESTERDAY
Chris Brown introduces his lecture
“My talk is divided into two parts. The first speaks of the present and discusses recent work.
The second part explores the past – why I do what I do and how I came to do it. I shall be talking of my influences, discussing the books I have read and the things I have seen, with examples of my early work dating from when I left Middlesex Polytechnic in 1976, my time at the Royal College of Art (77-80) and my work as an illustrator in subsequent years.
When I started, I felt burdened by the work I did previously, spending months worrying that I would not be able to do something as pleasing or as good again but, as I grew older and perhaps more confident, I grew comfortable with my talent and, in some areas, my lack of talent.
I have learnt that the past is not a burden but something to enjoy. Often now, I look back and think ‘that was not so bad’ and pat my younger self on the back.”
Fleet St
David Hockney
Little Venice
Kew Palace
Ewelme College (founded by Alice Chaucer, granddaughter of Geoffrey Chaucer in 1437)
Avebury
Portland
Mary Anning
Illustrations copyright © Chris Brown
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