James Mackinnon, Artist
To give you a chance to stock up for the cold months ahead, we are having a January sale. All titles in the online shop are half price with the discount code JANUARY until midnight on Twelfth Night.
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James Mackinnon’s paintings are featured in EAST END VERNACULAR, Artists who painted London’s East End streets in the 20th century which is included in the sale.
Twilight at London Fields, 2012
The streetscapes of James Mackinnon (born 1968), especially those of the East End and of London Fields in particular, captivate the viewer with their powerful atmosphere and magical sense of possibility – an effect compounded by the breathtaking accomplishment of their masterly execution.
“I grew up in South London in Lee Green, so I used to go to the Isle of Dogs through the foot tunnel under the Thames and I was mystified by the area north of the river. Sometimes I would bunk off school with a sketchbook and go wandering there. It seemed a mysterious land.
Later on, having left home and gone through college, there was a big recession and it was tough, all the students were scrabbling around for work, I had an epiphany. I was sat next to the Thames and I realised I just wanted to look at buildings and paint them.
In the early nineties, I moved to the East End because it was affordable and I had always wanted to explore there. I was slowly drawn to where my heart was guiding me, I would go round the back streets and explore the hinterlands. There is something compelling about going somewhere you do not really know about – the mysterious world of places. The atmosphere of places is born of people and their residue, it’s about people living there.
I lived near London Fields and there is this little terrace of Georgian houses with a railway line and overhead electric wires, and there are some tower blocks in the distance. It was such an interesting juxtaposition. A lot of East London landscapes have that, you might get a church sitting next to a railway line, next to tower block, next to the canal and a bit of old railing and some graffiti. That funny mixture. So I would just go and paint what I wanted. It was an act of faith, I knew it was what I had to do.
I tried having a studio but I was always a struggling artist so, when it came to rent day, it got tricky. There was a lot of signing on the dole and I lived in my studio for a bit to save money on the rent but the landlord found out and it was a cat and mouse game.
By the time I left, I think I had found myself. There is something in the painting that says it is by me rather than anyone else and that has evolved from having done it for twenty years. I just about managed to survive. I learned I have got the tenacity and self belief, that this is what I love. You find your path after a lot of struggle but it only comes by doing it.
You realise that a great painting can come from something very ordinary, you can go for a walk and there might be something round the corner that knocks you out. There was a lot of that in the East End and I am still obsessed by it though it is changing hugely. Some of the landscapes have altered already and some of the shops have gone.
I miss Hackney in many ways but I do not miss struggling and rents going up. I was there until around 2013, I had a great time and made some good friends. So now I have moved to Hastings. I had a little boy and it became untenable to carry on living in the East End. I had no choice.”
Homage to James Pryde, 2009 (The Mole Man’s House)
Broadway Market
Shops in Morning Lane, 2014
Hackney Canal near Mare St, 2012
Canal, Rosemary Works 2014
Savoy Cafe, Hackney, 2012
James Tower, London Fields, 2012
Alphabeat, 2007
Paintings copyright © James Mackinnon
Take a look at some of the other artists featured in East End Vernacular
Click here to buy a copy of EAST END VERNACULAR for half price
LAMAS Photographs
To give you a chance to stock up for the cold months ahead, we are having a January sale. All titles in the online shop are half price with the discount code JANUARY until midnight on Twelfth Night.
Click here to visit the Spitalfields Life Bookshop
Hundreds of LAMAS photographs are featured in THE GENTLE AUTHOR’S LONDON ALBUM which is included in the sale.
Many years ago, I became enraptured by a hundred-year-old collection of four thousand lantern slides. They were once used for educational lectures by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society (LAMAS) at the Bishopsgate Institute in Spitalfields. When Stefan Dickers became archivist there, he discovered the slides in dusty old boxes – abandoned and forgotten since they became obselete. Yet it has since become apparent that these slides, which were ignored for so long, are one of the greatest treasures in the collection. Thanks to the Institute, I was able to publish a selection of my favourite images in print for the first time in my London Album.
When I was first offered the opportunity of presenting these lantern slides which have been unseen for generations, I was overwhelmed by the number of pictures and did not know where to start. The first to catch my fancy were the ancient signs and symbols, dating from an era before street numbering located addresses and lettered signs advertised trades to Londoners.
Before long, I grew spellbound by the slide collection because, alongside the famous landmarks and grand occasions of state, there were pictures of forgotten corners and of ordinary people going about their business. It was a delight to discover hundreds of images of things that people do not usually photograph and I was charmed to realise that the anonymous photographers of the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society were as interested in pubs as they were in churches.
The more I studied the glass slides, the more joy I found in these arcane pictures, since every one contained the rich potential of hidden stories, seducing the imagination to flights of fancy regarding the ever-interesting subject of Old London. Once I had published The Signs of Old London, I realised there were many other such sets to be found among the slides, as a result of the systematic recording of London which underscored the original project by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society, a hundred years ago, and parallels my own work in Spitalfields Life, today.
If you cast your eye over the list of categories at the end of this story, that I chose to arrange these slides, you will see that I arranged them quite literally – in terms of doors, or night, or dinners, or streets, or staircases. I did this because I was interested to explore how the pictures might speak to me and to you, the readers. No evidence has survived to indicate in what sequence or order they were originally shown and it was my intention to avoid imposing any grand narratives of power or poverty, although these pictures do speak powerfully of these subjects. Recognising that objects and images are capable of many interpretations, I am one that prefers museums which permit the viewer to decide for themselves, rather than be presented with artefacts subject to a single meaning within an ordained story and so, with the Album, we have presented the pictures and invited the reader to draw their own conclusions.
Equally, in publishing the slides, we chose not to clean them up or remove imperfections and dirt. Similarly, we did not standardise the colour to black or a uniform sepia, either. Instead, we have cherished the subtle variations of hues present in these slides and savoured the beautiful colour contrasts between them, when laid side by side. There is a melancholic poetry in these shabby images, in which their damage and their imperfections speak of their history, and I came to glory in the patina and murk.
Above all, in publishing these pictures in my Album, I wanted to communicate the pleasure I have found in scrutinising them at length and entering another world imaginatively through the medium of this sublime photography.
Dustcart, c. 1910
The construction of Tower Bridge, 1886 -1894
Balloon ascent at Crystal Palace, Sydenham c. 1930
The Old Mitre, Hatton Garden
Fair at Hampstead Heath, c. 1910
Houses of Parliament by moonlight
The Old Vine Tavern, Mile End Rd
Wapping Pier Head,
Trinity Green Almshouses, Mile End c. 1920
Throgmorton St, c. 1920
Vintners’ Company, Master’s Installation procession, City of London, c.1920
Tram emerging from the Kingsway Tunnel, c. 1920
Clare Market, Aldwych, c. 1900
Barges next to Houses of Parliament, c. 1910
Leadenhall Market, c. 1910
Covent Garden Flower Hall, c. 1910
Whitechapel Hay Market, c. 1920
Butcher’s Shop, Hoxton Market c. 1900
St. Martin, Ludgate with St. Paul’s Cathedral, c. 1900
Rose Alley, Southwark, c. 1910
Tomb of Daniel Defoe at Bunhill Fields, c. 1910
Wall’s Ice Cream Seller c. 1920
The London Mayor’s Parade passes St Paul’s
White Drawing Room, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910
Boys lining up at The Oval, c.1930
Monument to Lady Elizabeth Nightingale, Westminster Abbey, c.1910
St Dunstan in the East, City of London, 1911
Mercers’ Hall, c.1910
St Bride’s Fleet St, c. 1920
Muffin Man, c. 1910
Regent St, 1900
Glass slides courtesy of Bishopsgate Institute
Take a look at these sets of the glass slides of Old London
The High Days & Holidays of Old London
The Forgotten Corners of Old London
The Statues & Effigies of Old London
Click here to order a copy for half price
Adam Dant’s London Calendar
We are commencing the New Year with a January sale. This is your chance to stock up for the cold months ahead. All titles in the online shop are half price with the discount code JANUARY until midnight on Twelfth Night. Click here to visit the Spitalfields Life Bookshop
Click on the calendar to enlarge
Ever-ingenious contributing artist Adam Dant has created this perpetual calendar of capital customs and traditions for Londoners near and far to welcome in the New Year. Study the calendar and imagine a better year than last year.
Adam Dant’s limited edition prints including THE LONDON CALENDAR are available to purchase through TAG Fine Arts
Oranges & Lemons Churches
Let us ring out the old year and ring in the new year with the bells of the ‘Oranges & Lemons’ churches
St Clement’s, Eastcheap
“Oranges and lemons,” say the bells of St. Clement’s.
Site of St Martin Orgar, Martin Lane
“You owe me five farthings,” say the bells of St. Martin’s.
St Sepulchre-without-Newgate
“When will you pay me?” say the bells of Old Bailey.
St Leonard’s, Shoreditch
“When I grow rich,” say the bells of Shoreditch.
St Dunstan’s, Stepney
“When will that be?” say the bells of Stepney.
St Mary Le Bow, Cheapside
“I do not know,” says the great bell of Bow.
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Viscountess Boudica’s Christmas
Our dearly beloved Viscountess Boudica was evicted from her flat in Bethnal Green in 2016 and moved to Uttoxeter, be we still remember her fondly every Christmas and follow her blog
Let it be said that if anyone in the East End knew how to keep the spirit of Christmas, it was the Viscountess Boudica of Bethnal Green. At this time of year, her tiny flat near Columbia Rd was transformed into a secret Winter Wonderland where the visitor might forget the chill of the gloomy streets outside and enter a realm of magic, fantasy and romance in which the Viscountess held court like a benevolent sprite or fairy godmother, celebrating the season of goodwill in her own inimitable style.
Boudica had already been at work for weeks when I arrived with my camera to capture the Christmas spectacle for your delight, yet she was still putting the finishing touches to her display even as I walked through the door. “You see these bells?” she said, reaching up to add them to the colourful forest of paper decorations suspended from the ceiling, “I bought them in Woolworths in Tottenham for 45p in 1984. When I think of all the people they have looked down upon – if only these bells could talk, they’ve seen it all!”
Evidence of the season was apparent wherever I turned my eyes, from the illuminated coloured trees that filled each corner – giving the impression that the room was actually a woodland glade – to the table where Boudica was wrapping her gifts and writing cards, to the corner where a stack of festive records awaited her selection, to the innumerable Christmas knick-knacks and figures that crowded every surface, and the light-up reindeer outside in the garden, glimpsed discreetly through the net curtains. “This is thirty years worth of collecting,” she explained, gesturing to the magnificent display enfolding us, “that set of lights is older than I am.”
In common with many, this is an equivocal time for Viscountess Boudica who does not have happy childhood memories of Christmas. “It was hell,” she admitted to me frankly, “We didn’t have any money to buy presents and, in our family, Christmas was always when fights and arguments would break out. The reason I have so many decorations now is to make up for all the years when I didn’t have any.” Yet Boudica remembers small acts of kindness too. “The local shops used to save me their balloons and give me scraps of fabric that I used to make clothes for the kittens in the barn – and that was the beginning of me making my own outfits,” she recalled fondly.
“People should remember what it’s all about,” Boudica assured me, linking her own childhood with the Christian narrative, “It’s about a little boy who didn’t have a home. They should think of others and remember there’s poor people here in Bethnal Green.” Naturally, I asked the Viscountess if she had a Christmas message for the world and, without a second thought, she came to back to me with her declaration – “Be kind to each other and get rid of discrimination!”
Boudica contemplates her Christmas listening – will it be Andy Williams or Jim Reeves this year?
“Whenever I hang up these bells, I think of all the people they have looked down upon over the years”
Wrapping up her gifts.
Filling her stocking
Nollaig Shona Dhaoibh!
Drawings copyright © Viscountess Boudica
You may also like to read
Viscountess Boudica’s Domestic Appliances
Viscountess Boudica’s Drawings
Viscountess Boudica’s Halloween
Viscountess Boudica’s Valentine’s Day
The Departure of Viscountess Boudica
Read my original profile of Mark Petty, Trendsetter
and take a look at Mark Petty’s Multicoloured Coats
David Hoffman & Crisis At Christmas
Next year – with your help – I plan to publish a book of David Hoffman’s photography of East London, including these breathtaking photographs of the origin of ‘Crisis at Christmas.’ David came to live in Whitechapel in the seventies and documented the world around him with candour and compassion: homelessness, racism, the rise of protest, and the incursion of the City – subjects that remain pertinent to this day.
Almost by chance, at the end of the seventies, photographer David Hoffman found himself recording the formation of an organisation called Crisis at Christmas that opened up disused spaces and created temporary shelters staffed by volunteers to provide accommodation for the homeless through the holiday season when other shelters were shut.
As a participant rather than a visitor, David was able to take intimate photographs of those who sought refuge, capturing emotional images which are humane yet void of sentimentality.
There is a timeless quality to many of these pictures that could equally be of refugees from a war zone or in some apocalyptic dystopian vision of the future, yet this is London in the recent past and Crisis at Christmas is still with us and the work goes on.
“At the time, I was known for my photos of the homeless at St Botolph’s in Aldgate and I was going out with a girl named Peta Watts, who was working at Crisis at Christmas – so when she asked me to take pictures there, I leapt at the chance of becoming the Crisis photographer, and I did it for three years.
This was the early days of these shelters and they used derelict churches. One of them was St Philip & St Augustine in Whitechapel, round the corner from the squat where I lived in Fieldgate Mansions, and the next year it was at the Tradescant church of St Mary’s in Lambeth. So there were very little facilities – perhaps only a cold tap and one toilet for hundreds of people – and the whole thing was a chaotic feat of organisation, but somehow it all worked. They got donations of food and clothing and toys. And I remember some of the guys found an old bath tub in a skip and brought it in and filled it with water, so they could wash themselves. There was no regard to Health & Safety or regulation as we know it, but it all worked brilliantly and everyone was very well looked after. There was no hierarchy and the homeless people would be involved in the cooking and arranging the mattresses, and keeping the whole thing running.
I photographed it because it was a wonderful event and – like at St Botolph’s – some of the people were couples, and I took their pictures and brought them prints the next day. Many of these people had been living on the streets all year and the photographs helped them to have a more positive self-image.
Some would be shooting up and and others would be drinking, and an ambulance would come two or three times a day to pick people up. There were fights too, and I remember there was an unspoken rule that only one volunteer would approach to break it up by speaking softly – and it never failed. Many of the volunteers were middle class people who would work eighteen to twenty hours a day. What I liked about it was people coming together and doing things for themselves – and it just worked, and the homeless people looked after each other.”
Photographs copyright © David Hoffman
Click here to donate to Crisis At Christmas
The Ghosts Of Old London
Click to enlarge this photograph
I find myself returning to scrutinize the collection of pictures taken by the Society for Photographing the Relics of Old London held in the archive at the Bishopsgate Institute. It gives me great pleasure to look closely and see the loaves of bread in the window and read the playbills on the wall in this photograph of a shop in Macclesfield St in 1883. The slow exposures of these photographs included fine detail of inanimate objects, just as they also tended to exclude people who were at work and on the move but, in spite of this, the more I examine these pictures the more inhabited they become.
On the right of this photograph, you see a woman and a boy standing on the step. She has adopted a sprightly pose of self-presentation with a jaunty hand upon the hip, while he looks hunched and ill at ease. But look again, another woman is partially visible, standing in the shop doorway. She has chosen not to be portrayed in the photograph, yet she is also present. Look a third time – click on the photograph above to enlarge it – and you will see a man’s face in the window. He has chosen not to be portrayed in the photograph either, instead he is looking out at the photograph being taken. He is looking at the photographer. He is looking at us, returning our gaze. Like the face at the window pane in “The Turn of the Screw,” he challenges us with his visage. Unlike the boy and the woman on the right, he has not presented himself to the photographer’s lense, he has retained his presence and his power. Although I shall never know who he is, or his relationship to the woman in the doorway, or the nature of their presumed conversation, yet I cannot look at this picture now without seeing him as the central focus of the photograph. He haunts me. He is one of the ghosts of old London.
It is the time of year when I think of ghosts, when shadows linger in old houses and a silent enchantment reigns over the empty streets. Let me be clear, I am not speaking of supernatural agency, I am speaking of the presence of those who are gone. At Christmas, I always remember those who are absent this year, and I put up all the cards previously sent by my mother and father, and other loved ones, in fond remembrance. Similarly, in the world around me, I recall the indicators of those who were here before me, the worn step at the entrance to the former night shelter in Crispin St and the eighteenth century graffiti at the entrance to St Pauls Cathedral, to give but two examples. And these photographs also provide endless plangent details for contemplation, such as the broken windows and the shabby clothing strung up to dry at the Oxford Arms, both significant indicators of a certain way of life.
To me, these fascinating photographs are doubly-haunted. The spaces are haunted by the people who created these environments in the course of their lives, culminating in buildings in which the very fabric evokes the presence of their inhabitants, because many are structures worn out with usage. And equally, the photographs are haunted by the anonymous Londoners who are visible in them, even if their images were incidental to the purpose of these photographs as an architectural record.
The pictures that capture people absorbed in the moment touch me most – like the porter resting his basket at the corner of Friday St – because there is a compelling poetry to these inconsequential glimpses of another age, preserved here for eternity, especially when the buildings themselves have been demolished over a century ago. These fleeting figures, many barely in focus, are the true ghosts of old London and if we can listen, and study the details of their world, they bear authentic witness to our past.
Two girls lurk in the yard behind this old house in the Palace Yard, Lambeth.
A woman turns the corner into Wych St.
A girl watches from a balcony at the Oxford Arms while boys stand in the shadow below.
At the Oxford Arms, 1875.
At the entrance to the Oxford Arms – the Society for Photographing the Relics of Old London was set up to save the Oxford Arms, yet it failed in the endeavour, preserving only this photographic record.
A relaxed gathering in Drury Lane.
A man turns to look back in Drury Lane, 1876.
At the back of St Bartholomew’s, Smithfield, 1877.
In Gray’s Inn Lane.
A man peers from the window of a chemists’ at the corner of Lower James St and Brewer St.
A lone policeman on duty in High Holborn, 1878.
A gentleman in Barnard’s Inn.
At White Hart Inn yard.
At Queen’s Inn yard.
A woman lingers in front of the butcher in Borough High St, Southwark.
In Aldgate.
A porter puts down his basket in the street at the corner of Cheapside and Friday St.
In Fleet St.
The Old Bell, Holborn
At the corner of Fore St and Milton St.
Doorways on Lawrence Pountney Hill.
A conversation at the entrance to Inner Temple, Fleet St.
Images copyright © Bishopsgate Institute
You can see more pictures from the Society for Photographing the Relics of Old London here In Search of Relics of Old London
