Bernard Kops, Poet, Novelist & Playwright
Join me for an evening of readings and conversation with Bernard Kops & Ken Sequin, hosted by Rachel Lichtenstein at Leila’s Cafe, Calvert Avenue, on Tuesday 26th September 7:30pm. Ken will read poems from EXODUS and other collections. Click here to reserve your free ticket
“It’s amazing I have lived so long, after all the drugs that I have taken in my life!” declared Bernard Kops with a certain genial alacrity – speaking now as a sprightly ninety year old – when I visited him and his wife of sixty-two years, Erica, in Finchley. Yet once he told me his stories of growing up in Stepney Green in the nineteen thirties, I understood how those experiences might instill a keen will to live which could, in part at least, account for his glorious longevity.
Bernard’s father left Rotterdam with his family in 1902, hoping to get to New York, but when he bought his ticket it only took him as far as London. The ticket office in Amsterdam explained that he could collect the second part of his ticket to New York from Mr Smith on arrival in London, but when he arrived in the Port of London and asked for Mr Smith everyone laughed at him. And thus it was that Bernard’s father’s dream of America was supplanted by the East End. Later, the relatives in Amsterdam implored Bernard’s father to return with his family prior to the outbreak of World War II, believing that Holland would remain neutral and Bernard remembers his father weeping because he could not afford the tickets to return. Yet those relatives were all killed by the Nazis and Bernard’s father’s impecunious situation was the salvation of his immediate family.
Such is the equivocal nature of Bernard Kops’ inheritance and, even now, looking back from his current perspective as the father of four children, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, it colours all experience with a certain sentiment, cherishing the fleeting brilliance of life.
“I couldn’t have done anything without Erica,” he assured me last week, prefacing our conversation, when I visited him in the Victorian apartment block in Finchley where he has lived for the last half century, moving there from Soho in the days when it was an enclave of writers and artists. Walking down the long passage in his modest basement flat, I found him in a peaceful room looking out onto the garden where we chatted beneath the poster for “The Hamlet of Stepney Green.” Bernard’s first play launched him as one of the new wave of young playwrights from the East End, alongside Arnold Wesker and Harold Pinter, that came to define British theatre in the post-war era. “There were actors who couldn’t fathom what we were doing, but we brought the streets into the theatre,” Bernard explained, “I still think of myself as a street person, I come from a verbal culture where everybody was always talking all the time.”
Recalling his childhood, he said, “Everyone was starving in those days before the war. And when my sister Phoebe came home and she had got a job, we were all overjoyed. But then she came back from the sweatshop and said the boss has been feeling her up. ‘She’s not going back,’ said my mother. ‘We need the money,’ said my father. Because we were so poor, every day was a battle. My whole life was a drama.”
“I was different from my brothers and sisters, and I don’t know why,” Bernard confessed, still bemused by his literary talent, “My mother recognised it, she used to say, ‘He’s the one that’s going to take me to Torquay one day.’ That was her measure of success.” One of Bernard’s earliest memories is of hiding under the table to eavesdrop on the adults and his mother asking, “Where’s my Bernie?” which was the cue for him to jump out and delight her.
As a child, Bernard knew that it was not safe for him to stray up the Cambridge Heath Rd towards Bethnal Green because that was where the fascist blackshirts were. Yet on the day that war was declared, when Bernard’s mother gave him sixpence to seek his own amusement, he took a bus through the danger zone up to the West End where – at eleven years old – he discovered a vision of whole other world that he realised his mother had never seen. Then, walking down Brick Lane one day just after the war, a young man stopped Bernard and asked what he was mumbling under his breath and Bernard admitted he was speaking poetry. Realising that Bernard had never read any poetry, he gave Bernard a slim volume of Rupert Brooke published by Faber and Faber. “So I read Grantchester and I thought it was fantastic,” Bernard recalled fondly, “I went to the library and asked, ‘Have you got any more Faber and Faber books like this?’ The library gave me freedom.”
In common with generations of writers and artists from the East End, Bernard Kops educating himself using the collection at the former Whitechapel Library next to the Whitechapel Gallery. From here, Bernard took classes in drama at Toynbee Hall which focused upon improvisation – inventing plays – and it gave him the technique to launch himself as playwright. This was a move that eventually led him to live in Soho, enjoying the company of his literary peers, and he recalls returning from there to Hanbury St to visit Colin McInnes while he was writing Absolute Beginners, in which Bernard appears in a barely fictionalised form as “Mannie Katz.”
In summation,“I’m a poet basically,” he announced to me with a diffident smile.
All this time, Erica had been sitting across the room from us, encouraging Bernard by making small appreciative noises and completing the odd stray sentence in a story she has heard innumerable times. In a prolific career including plays, screenplays, poems, novels and autobiography, life has not run entirely smoothly for Bernard who succumbed to drug addiction and depression, yet overcame both afflictions with Erica’s support to reach his current state of benign equanimity. “I said to her, the moment I met her, that I was going to marry her, and she thought I was absolutely mad,” Bernard confided, raising his voice and catching Erica’s eye provocatively. “And I haven’t changed my mind,” confirmed Erica with a nod from the other side of the room, folding her hands affectionately.
Whitechapel Library, Aldgate East
Bernard & Erica
For You
Bernard Kops
Portraits copyright © Lucinda Douglas-Menzies
You may also like to read my piece about Bernard Kops’ close friend
William Morris In The East End
If you spotted someone hauling an old wooden Spitalfields Market orange crate around the East End last week, that was me undertaking a pilgrimage to some of the places William Morris spoke in the hope he might return for one last oration
William Morris spoke at Speakers’ Corner in Victoria Park on 26th July & 11th October 1885, 8th August 1886, 27th March & 21st May 1888
The presence of William Morris in the East End is almost forgotten today. Yet he took the District Line from his home in Hammersmith regularly to speak here through the last years of his life, despite persistent ill-health. Ultimately disappointed that the production of his own designs had catered only to the rich, Morris dedicated himself increasingly to politics and in 1884 he became editor of The Commonweal, newspaper of the Socialist League, using the coach house at Kelsmcott House in Hammersmith as its headquarters.
As an activist, Morris spoke at the funeral of Alfred Linnell, who was killed by police during a free speech rally in Trafalgar Sq in 1887, on behalf of the Match Girls’ Strike in 1888 and in the Dock Strike of 1889. His final appearance in the East End was on Mile End Waste on 1st November 1890, on which occasion he spoke at a protest against the brutal treatment of Jewish people in Russia.
When William Morris died of tuberculosis in 1896, his doctor said, ‘he died a victim to his enthusiasm for spreading the principles of Socialism.’ Morris deserves to be remembered for his commitment to the people of the East End in those years of political turmoil as for the first time unions struggled to assert the right to seek justice for their workers.
8th April 1884, St Jude’s Church, Commercial St – Morris gave a speech at the opening of the annual art exhibition on behalf of Vicar Samuel Barnett who subsequently founded Toynbee Hall and the Whitechapel Gallery.
During 1885, volunteers distributed William Morris’ What Socialists Want outside the Salmon & Ball in Bethnal Green
1st September 1885, 103 Mile End Rd
20th September 1885, Dod St, Limehouse – When police launched a violent attack on speakers of the Socialist League who defended the right to free speech at this traditional spot for open air meetings, William Morris spoke on their behalf in court on 22nd September in Stepney.
10th November 1886 & 3rd July 1887, Broadway, London Fields
November 20th 1887, Bow Cemetery – Morris spoke at the burial of Alfred Linnell, a clerk who was killed by police during a free speech rally in Trafalgar Sq. ‘Our friend who lies here has had a hard life and met with a hard death, and if our society had been constituted differently his life might have been a delightful one. We are engaged in a most holy war, trying to prevent our rulers making this great town of London into nothing more than a prison.’
9th April 1889, Toynbee Hall, Commercial St – Morris gave a magic lantern show on the subject of ‘Gothic Architecture’
1st November 1890, Mile End Waste – Morris spoke in protest against the persecution of Jews in Russia
William Morris in the East End
3rd January & 27th April 1884, Tee-To-Tum Coffee House, 166 Bethnal Green Rd
8th April 1884, St Jude’s Church, Commercial St
29th October 1884, Dod St, Limehouse
9th November 1884, 13 Redman’s Row
11th January & 12th April 1885, Hoxton Academy Schools
29th March 24th May 1885, Stepney Socialist League, 110 White Horse St
26th July & 11th October 1885, Victoria Park
8th August 1885, Socialist League Stratford
16th August 1885, Exchange Coffee House, Pitfield St, Hoxton
1st September 1885, Swaby’s Coffee House, 103 Mile End Rd
22nd September 1885, Thames Police court, Stepney (Before Magistrate Sanders)
24th January 1886, Hackney Branch Rooms, 21 Audrey St, Hackney Rd
2nd February 1886, International Working Men’s Educational Club, 40 Berners St
5th June 1886, Socialist League Stratford
11th July 1886, Hoxton Branch of the Socialist League, 2 Crondel St
24th August 1886, Socialist League Mile End Branch, 108 Bridge St
13th October 1886, Congregational Schools, Swanscombe St, Barking Rd
10th November 1886, Broadway, London Fields
6th March 1887, Hoxton Branch of the Socialist League, 2 Crondel St
13th March & 12th June 1887, Hackney Branch Rooms, 21 Audrey St, Hackney Rd
27th March 1887, Borough of Hackney Club, Haggerston
27th March, 21st May, 23rd July, 21st August & 11th September, 1887 Victoria Park
24th April 1887, Morley Coffee Tavern Lecture Hall, Mare St
3rd July 1887, Broadway, London Fields
21st August 1887, Globe Coffee House, High St, Hoxton
25th September 1887, Hoxton Church
27th September 1887, Mile End Waste
18th December 1887, Bow Cemetery, Southern Grove
17th April 1888, Mile End Socialist Hall, 95 Boston St
17th April 1888, Working Men’s Radical Club, 108 Bridge St, Burdett Rd
16th June 1888, International Club, 23 Princes Sq, Cable St
17th June 1888, Victoria Park
30th June 1888, Epping Forest Picnic
22nd September 1888, International Working Men’s Education Club, 40 Berners St
9th April 1889, Toynbee Hall, Commercial St
27th June 1889, New Labour Club, 5 Victoria Park Sq, Bethnal Green
8th June 1889, International Working Men’s Education Club, 40 Berners St
1st November 1890, Mile End Waste
This feature draws upon the research of Rosemary Taylor as published in her article in The Journal of William Morris Studies. Click here to join the William Morris Society
You may also like to read about
Patrick Baty’s East End Projects
Upon the publication of his definitive work, The Anatomy of Colour, Patrick Baty, acknowledged authority on historical paint, pigments and papers looks back on cherished East End projects
The bandstand at Arnold Circus is painted a handsome Brunswick Green
Although I have probably only worked on a dozen buildings in the whole of the East End, these have been amongst the finest and most interesting of their kind, ranging from the relatively humble to the magnificent. Yet I did have an ancestor, Timothy Bevan, who lived at the junction of what is now Mare St and Paragon Rd, and, when I gave a talk to the Hackney Society, a local historian recognised me from an eighteenth century portrait of my great great-great-great-great grandpa. A memory that still causes the hairs to rise on the back of my neck!
When the Market Café in Fournier St, favourite eating place of Gilbert & George, closed and the premises were converted into a shop I was asked for advice on the colours – both interior and exterior. Over the years, I had already helped the owners of at least three other houses in the same street, including the Rectory of Christ Church. By definition, these were all variants on a theme with many of the same suggestions being made. Usually, the information is well received, but sometimes it is a losing battle because people often have their own idea of what eighteenth century decoration looks like and, when faced with the early colour palette, prefer the artificial reality of ‘Copper-Kettledom.’
I am delighted to say that ‘Red’ Mason, the project architect on the restoration of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s magnificent Christ Church did more than listen. He asked me to carry out a full analysis of the painted surfaces within the church and then insisted that the original scheme was reinstated. We had to use a good deal of common sense too, as there were technical issues that were not faced by the early painters. However, this aspect is well understood, because so rarely does one use ‘authentic’ materials and I am not a believer in the so-called ‘traditional’ paints used by some enthusiasts. All too often their main components are products that were unknown before the mid-twentieth century – casting some doubt on the ‘traditional’ appelation. I am very much a pragmatist, one must understand historical practice, but one must also produce a scheme that can be maintained, is not inordinately expensive, is long-lasting and can be repeated. Health and Safety is also, very much, an issue thee days.
Another Hawksmoor church of the East End that became a project for me was St George in the East. Admittedly, it is a bit of a cheat to include this, as the interior of the church was destroyed in the Blitz. However, the north and south gates and their overthrows were thought to be original and I was asked to examine their paint layers. In this case, I was able, from the paint alone, to tell my client that the gates were not original to the construction of the church. Although erected at the same time as each other, it seemed likely that they dated from the end of the eighteenth or beginning of the nineteenth centuries. Old, but not original.
I have never actually had a wishlist, but if I did, the very rare surviving shopfront of 56 Artillery Lane would have been on it. Needless to say, I was thrilled to be invited to undertake the paint analysis of the premises and its neighbour at number 58. Forty-two decorative schemes were found on number 56, which means that roughly every six years it had been repainted since the 1750s. Pale stone colour was used consistently until the end of the nineteenth century, when graining in imitation of oak had been introduced. After further graining, a number of schemes of a deep red-brown colour were applied – probably from the very early years of the twentieth century until the premises were refurbished in the late sixties. Black was employed once before the dark green that was introduced in the seventies and existed until 2005. Needless to say, some felt the green was more of a ‘Georgian’ colour than the stone colour that was readopted. Interestingly enough, another eighteenth century shopfront – this time in Dean St, Soho – was also found to have been painted stone colour originally. Dark green had been employed initially, however, on the shopfront to number 58, which I was able to show had been installed in the 1820s. From the 1870s, it seems both shopfronts tended to be painted in tandem.
In spite of having been badly damaged by a fire in 1972, it was useful to examine the interiors of numbers 56 and 58. It is by looking at a large number of such interiors that one develops a reasonable idea as to how buildings of this period were treated. This information enables me to provide general advice to those clients who do not want to have analysis carried out, but just want steering in the ‘right’ direction.
Number 58 Artillery Lane was very satisfactory from another point of view. My enlightened client managed (courtesy of The Spitalfields Trust) to buy back the panelled room that had been removed from the first floor in the twenties and shipped over to the Art Institute of Chicago. Analysis was also undertaken on that and the original scheme has been reinstated.
More than anything, it is the variety of jobs that I am asked to tackle that I find most stimulating. I have never found myself in a rut and my work is certainly not confined to genteel drawing rooms and panelled interiors. To be asked to examine the fire-damaged bandstand at Arnold Circus was a welcome challenge. Having already sampled a few bandstands in public parks across the country, I get great pleasure from working on projects that can be enjoyed by the many.
The Boundary Estate, constructed from 1890, was one of the world’s earliest social housing schemes. It was built by the London County Council to replace the Friars Mount slum in the Old Nichol between Shoreditch High St and Hackney Road in the north, and Spitalfields to the south. The rubble was used to construct a mound in the middle of Arnold Circus at the centre of the development and the bandstand sits on this. In doing my initial research, I was struck by how much a part it still played in the local community. This bandstand, which was built around 1910, had been badly vandalised but it has now been repainted in its original Brunswick green colour and, once again, sits proudly at the centre of things.
Another community asset that gave me a sense of fulfilment was the analysis of the paint at Assembly Hall of Shoreditch Town Hall. Before I started, I was entirely ignorant of the symbolism of the torch-bearing figure on the façade and the significance behind the motto ‘More Light, More Power’. At the end of the nineteenth century a very ambitious and forward-thinking complex had been constructed in Shoreditch which combined a refuse incinerator, electricity generating station, library, baths and a washhouse. Rubbish was burnt to drive turbines that generated electricity to light the streets and steam that heated the baths and library. The remains of the burnt refuse were recycled further as aggregate for the concrete used in constructing the extension to the Town Hall. A very neat, modern, solution.
Yet another project that gave me a nice rosy glow and broadened my education was the analysis of the Channelsea Bridge (Northern Outfall Sewer bridge) in Stratford. Greatly ignored for many years, this forms a significant part of the group of historic structures at the Abbey Mills pumping station and reflects the early expansion of the complex to cope with London’s growing population. The sewer runs from Wick Lane in Hackney to Beckton sewage treatment works. Most of it was designed by Sir Joseph Bazalgette after an outbreak of cholera in 1853 and the ‘Great Stink’ of 1858. Later, I especially enjoyed walking over the newly-refurbished bridge while completing the Capital Ring.
Perhaps my, oldest and certainly one of my favourite, East End clients has been the Geffrye Museum for whom I have carried out a great deal of work. Recent projects have included the restoration of one of the almshouses to its 1780s and 1880s appearance and the repainting of the exterior of the Museum based on the results of my paint analysis.
Thus each job feeds the next and snippets of information picked up during the analysis of one will prove useful on another. And it has been my pleasure to condense and include this knowledge in my book The Anatomy of Colour, which is the first account of the use of paint and colour in decoration in this country from 1650 to 1950.
Barber’s Barn, Hackney. Once home of John Okey, a signatory of Charles I’s death warrant, and later of Patrick Baty’s ancestor, Timothy Bevan (1704-1786) who ran the Plough Court Pharmacy. Its grounds were later cultivated by John Busch, nurseryman to Catherine II of Russia. The house was demolished in the mid-nineteenth century.
Horses were once led blindfold through this passageway at 5 Fournier St, former The Market Cafe and now the Townhouse
Rectory, Fournier St
Interior of Christ Church
58 Artillery Lane
Geffrye Museum
A room at the Geffrye Almshouses furnished as it might have been in 1780
A room at the Geffrye Almshouses furnished as it might have been in 1880
The Anatomy of Colour, published by Thames & Hudson is available from all good bookshops and (with a small discount) from John Sandoe
Alan Stapleton’s Alleys, Byways & Courts
In the archive at the Bishopsgate Institute, I had the good fortune to come across a copy of Alan Stapleton’s London’s Alleys, Byways & Courts, 1923. A title guaranteed to send anyone as susceptible as myself meandering through the capital’s forgotten thoroughfares, yet the great discovery is how many of these have survived in recognisable form today. Clearly a kindred spirit, Stapleton prefaces his work with the following quote from Dr Johnson (who lived in a square at the end of an alley) – ‘If you wish to have a notion of the magnitude of this great city, you must not be satisfied with seeing its great streets and squares, but survey its innumerable little lanes and courts.’
St John’s Passage, EC1
Passing Alley, EC1
St John’s Gate from Jerusalem Passage, EC1
Stewart’s Place, Clerkenwell Green, EC1
Clerkenwell Close, EC1
Savoy Steps, Strand, WC2
Red Lion Passage, Red Lion Sq, WC1
Corner of Kingley St & Foubert’s Place, W1
Market St, Shepherd Market, W1
Crown Court, Pall Mall, SW1
Rupert Court, W1
Meard’s St, W1
Conduit Court, Long Acre, WC2
Devereaux Court, Strand, WC2
Greystoke Place, Chancery Lane, EC4
Huggin Lane, Cannon St, EC4
Mitre Court, EC1
Faulkner’s Alley, Cow Cross St, EC1
Last of Snatcher’s Island, Drury Lane, WC2
Brick Lane looking north
Brick Lane looking south
‘Hatton in 1708 called Brick Lane the longest lane in London, being nearly three quarters of a mile long. But Park Lane by Hyde Park was then six furlongs thirteen poles in length, so it had the advantage of Brick Lane, the length of which was five furlongs four poles. Today, Brick Lane by taking in its length its old continuations, Tyssen St and Turk’s St now beats it by thirteen poles. Tyssen St measuring one furlong fourteen poles and Turk’s St eight poles, thus bringing the length of the current Brick Lane to six furlongs twenty-six poles. Yet White HorseLane was undoubtedly the longest in London when it existed’ – Alan Stapelton 1923
Images courtesy © Bishopsgate Institute
You may also like to take a look at
Bill Brandt, Photographer
Continuing his series of profiles of photographers who pictured the East End in the twentieth century, Contributing Writer Mark Richards explores the photography of Bill Brandt
East End girl dancing the Lambeth Walk, 1939
The most influential modernist photographer of his generation, Bill Brandt revealed a unique way of interpreting the world through photography, making the mundane appear strange and, at times, unnerving. Over three decades, his images of London and elsewhere in England, represent an important record of social history in this country. Although he is less well known than figures such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brandt remains one of the most complex and significant personalities in a golden age of photography on film.
Contemplating Brandt’s work, the first thing you must recognise is that his images share a common quality – as a viewer, you are seeing what he wants you to see. Even the subjects of his photographs are not always who they purport to be. Brandt sought reality through artifice – what mattered to him was the final image not his route to it. He controlled every aspect of his photography, composition, setting and printing. His captions are often deliberately ambiguous, leaving the viewer to draw their own interpretation, contributing to the surrealism that pervades much of his work, especially his portraiture.
Speaking of his photography, Brandt said – “I believe this power of seeing the world as fresh and strange lies hidden in every human being. Vicariously, through another person’s eyes, men and women can see the world anew. It is shown to them as something interesting and exciting. There is given to them again a sense of wonder. This should be the photographer’s aim, for this is the purpose that pictures fulfil in the world as it is today – to meet a need that people cannot or will not meet for themselves. We are most of us too busy, too worried, too intent on proving ourselves right, too obsessed with ideas to stand and stare.”
The influence of earlier photographers such as Man Ray and Brassaï can be seen in his early work. Yet Brandt later surpassed both – in terms of his ability to generate a sense of wonder and also of disappointment, when his style became inconsistent and unpredictable.
Brandt established his reputation in the thirties through publication of two books: The English at Home (1936) and A Night in London (1938). The photography in The English at Home bears similarities to the work of Edith Tudor-Hart and they had both been in Vienna in 1934, although their lives and motivations were distinctly different. A Night in London was undoubtedly influenced heavily by Brassaï and his seminal Paris de Nuit (1932). Both of Brandt’s books were social documentaries and comprise images that are immediately accessible yet also sometimes challenging to the casual viewer. Couple in Peckham, 1936 is one of these unsettling images that raises more questions than answers, an ambiguity compounded by the wording of the title.
Unlike some of his contemporaries, Brandt pursued an unfettered approach to photography, in line with his personal life which was Bohemian and unconventional for the time. He cast aside aesthetic rules in his search for artistic expression through photography and rejected social norms in his personal life too. This disregard for convention was the key to many of his most striking images.
In 1948, he said: “I am not interested in rules and conventions … photography is not a sport. If I think a picture will look better brilliantly lit, I use lights, or even flash. It is the result that counts, no matter how it was achieved. I find the darkroom work most important, as I can finish the composition of a picture only under the enlarger. I do not understand why this is supposed to interfere with the truth. Photographers should follow their own judgment, and not the fads and dictates of others”
Born into a well-off family, Brandt drifted around Europe throughout his twenties, absorbing influences which would shape his creative work. He said that he began his photographic career in Paris in 1929, where he read surrealist publications such as Bifui, Varietes Minotaure which were publishing photography for its poetic quality for the first time. Also influenced by surrealist films such as Bunuel’s Le Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or, he saw these as catalysts for a new age of poetic photography. Among the influences acquired during these Paris years, which shaped the rest of Brandt’s career, was the photography of Eugène Atget who had died a few years earlier but whose work was just being recognised then.
Brandt was fortunate to be offered an opportunity to work as a pupil in Man Ray’s studio and this was a seminal point in his photographic career. He learned from Man Ray who became his role-model. Brandt considered him to be the most original photographer in the world, working at that time with his inventions of solarisation and Rayographs.
Brandt was attracted to photography both as social reportage and as poetry, with Edward Weston and Man Ray drawing him towards the latter. Yet before the war, Brandt’s photography was mainly social documentary and, like Edith Tudor-Hart, he was fascinated by the extreme social contrast between the rich and poor. When photographing for The English at Home, Brandt first started in the West End, portraying the well-off and the social structures that supported their lavish lifestyles. Then he contrasted these images with a series of photographs of the East End. To this day, these images retain their impact as records of lost lifestyles at both ends of the social spectrum. His photograph East End girl dancing the Lambeth Walk, 1939 possesses a joyful innocence that is in poignant contrast what lay just ahead.
In 1937, Brandt headed north to the Durham Coalfields and took some of his most powerful images of England in the thirties. He considered his photograph of a coal searcher with a bicycle to be the most successful of this series and it is impossible to look at that image without being moved by his sympathetic representation of working-class life during a period of mass unemployment. Brandt’s Coal miners’ houses with no windows to the street, East Durham 1937 is stark and surreal, inviting accusations that it was manipulated although there is no evidence that it was. The picture’s location is deliberately ambiguous and it challenges our preconceptions of life in East Durham at that time.
Returning to London, Brandt set about photographing the nocturnal city at night for his next book. The result was a remarkable series of noir photographs, some of indistinct shapes and others of characters lost in the blackness of London after nightfall.
Unlike those who engaged with their subjects, Brandt was deliberately distant when photographing people in their homes, concentrating on the surroundings and the image as a whole. It was an approach which contributed an otherworldly feel to the images.
Brandt outlined his strategy thus – “I always take portraits in my sitter’s own surroundings. I concentrate very much on the picture as a whole and leave the sitter rather to himself. I hardly talk and barely look at him. This often seems to make people forget what is going on and any affected or self-conscious expression usually disappears… I think a good portrait ought to tell something of the subject’s past and suggest something of his future.”
When he moved into portraiture, the majority were initially published by Liliput and then Harper’s Bazaar but he also had pictures printed in Picture Post. His focus was on literary and artistic figures and, to my knowledge, he never photographed politicians or sports personalities. Brandt began experimenting further with his technique, purchasing an old extreme wide-angle camera and using this to challenge traditional portraiture. The distorting effect and deep depth of field were reminiscent of the new cinematography at that time and one of his most well-known images in this genre Portrait of a young girl, Eaton Place may have been inspired by Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane.
After the war, Brandt’s style changed dramatically again. He lost interest in documentary. Everyone else was doing it by then. Often asked about this change, he revealed that he believed the basis of his social images of the thirties had been eroded by a new social order.
“my main theme of the past few years had disappeared; England was no longer a country of marked social contrast. Whatever the reason, the poetic trend of photography, which had already excited me in my early Paris days, began to fascinate me again. it seemed to me that there were wide fields still unexplored. I began to photograph nudes, portraits, and landscapes”
Much of the character of what Brandt achieved in his earlier period was manufactured in the darkroom. This work was notable for its subtlety – something which can only be appreciated in the original print. It was one of the reasons why his work attracted the attention of museums and galleries. When Brandt changed his style, much of the subtlety of his atmospheric images of the thirties was deliberately sacrificed and, in his nudes of the fifties, we are confronted with deep shadows and burned-out highlights. It was an approach which led to the erosion of his reputation in some quarters but Brandt remained defiant.
The impact of this aesthetic transformation was revealed in an exchange of letters between Edward Steichen, curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Brandt in 1959 in which Steichen reluctantly expressed his concerns over what he perceived to be the deteriorating quality of Brandt’s prints. Brandt was deeply hurt by Steichen’s criticism but defended the change, saying that the highly contrasted black and white effect suited his pictures better.
Since his death, copies of Brandt’s photographs made without regard to his artistic preferences and distributed through the internet have compromised the understanding and appreciation of his photography. The only real way to understand Brandt as a photographer is through his original prints. The quality of reproduction in Shadows and Light by Sarah Hermanson Meister is the closest any publication I am aware of has come to Brandt’s intentions and I recommend it to anyone who wishes to learn more about this remarkable photographer.
Shad Thames, a street between warehouses in Bermondsey c.1936
Early morning on the Thames, thirties
Porter at Billingsgate Market, 1934
Housewife, Bethnal Green 1937
Customers at the Crooked Billet, Tower Hill 1939
Couple in Peckham, 1936
Circus Boyhood, 1933
A Lyons Nippy (Miss Hibbott), 1939
At Charley Brown’s pub, Limehouse, 1945
In a Mayfair drawing room, 1939
Parlourmaid preparing a bath before dinner, 1937
Hatter’s window, Bond Street 1935
After the celebration, 1934
Taxi, Lower Regent St 1935
Piccadilly at Night, 1938
Policeman in a Bermondsey Alley, 1938
St Paul’s in the moonlight, 1942
Sikh family sheltering in an alcove where coffins once stood in the crypt of Christ Church, Spitalfields, 1940
Battersea Bridge, 1939
Northumbrian coal miner eating his evening meal, 1937
Coal miners’ houses with no windows to the street, East Durham 1937
Coal searcher returning home, Jarrow 1937
Portrait of a young girl, Eaton Place, 1955
Nude, Belgravia, 1951
Photographs copyright © Estate of Bill Brandt
You may also like to read about
Save The Bethnal Green Mulberry
The East End Preservation Society has launched a petition to save the centuries-old Bethnal Green Mulberry and below is my account of the scandal in which developers Crest Nicholson were unlawfully granted permission to dig up the tree this spring. CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION
Design by Paul Bommer
Growing in the grounds of the former London Chest Hospital next to Victoria Park, the Bethnal Green Mulberry stands today in the middle of a development site for luxury flats. It is a gnarly old specimen which in local lore is understood to be more than four hundred years old and is believed to be the oldest tree in the East End. Centuries ago, these were the gardens of Bishop Bonner’s Palace and it is he who is credited with planting the Mulberry tree.
I find it a poignant spectacle to view this venerable Black Mulberry. Damaged by a bomb in the Second World War, it has charring still visible upon its trunk which has split to resemble a Barbara Hepworth sculpture. Yet, in spite of its scars and the props that are required to support its tottering structure, the elderly tree produces a luxuriant covering of green leaves each spring and bears a reliably generous crop of succulent fruit every summer.
Astonishingly, it seemed that all this history and a Tree Protection Order are insufficient to protect the venerable Mulberry. This spring, developer Crest Nicholson obtained a waiver from Tower Hamlets Senior Arboricultural Officer, Edward Buckton, permitting them to prune it, dig it up and move it to clear the way for their proposed development, even though this has not yet been approved by the council (headquarters at the appropriately named Mulberry Place).
The decision was made under delegated powers by Buckton on the basis of a report commissioned by the developer from planning consultants ‘Tree: Fabrik’ who conveniently dismissed any notion that this Mulberry is a veteran specimen, suggesting instead that it is a more recent planting which might easily survive having its roots and branches pruned, and being moved out of the way this spring. The first that was known of the decision by members of the public and local councillors was when an announcement was posted on a lamppost in Bethnal Green, precluding the possibility of any consultation.
Enter the heroic White Knight of East End conservation Tom Ridge, a former geography teacher and veteran local heritage campaigner, who issued Judicial Review proceedings at his own expense, claiming that the council had acted unlawfully in granting permission to dig up the tree and thus obtaining a stay of execution for the ancient Mulberry. As expert witness, Ridge employed Chartered Arboriculturist Julian Forbes-Laird who was the technical editor of the British Standard for tree protection.
Forbes-Laird’s report as submitted to the High Court makes compelling reading. “I identify the Mulberry as a veteran tree,” he wrote, “I cannot understand how any reasonable arboriculturist could conclude otherwise.” He quotes Gascoigne’s map of 1703 confirming the location of the Bishop’s Hall and even refers to a woodcut in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs published in 1563 that illustrates the Bishop flogging a martyr in his garden beneath the branches of a young tree which he suggests is the Mulberry in question. He describes the commemorative inkwell kept at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, dating from 1915, with a brass plate explaining it was made from a branch of the Mulberry beneath which Bishop Bonner sat while deciding which heretics to execute.
These scraps of evidence confirm a long-standing cultural history attached to the Bethnal Green Mulberry, which was already considered to be ancient over than a century ago. A feeble claim by the developer that concrete found among the roots confirms the recent origin of the tree receives short shrift from Forbes-Laird, who points out that the Romans used concrete to build the Pantheon. He confirms, “there is no evidence that the Mulberry stands upon modern made ground, meaning that it could, indeed, be as old as is believed.”
Most sobering is Forbes-Laird’s conclusion, “Overall, I consider that the intended tree works offer very little chance of the tree’s survival.” Thankfully, Tom Ridge won the Judicial Review and, in a Consent Order sealed by the High Court in July, the council’s decision was quashed. The Council were also ordered to pay Tom Ridge’s costs, although they are refusing to comply with this part of the judgement.
Even now the Bethnal Green Mulberry is not saved.
In their current proposals, Crest Nicholson have plonked a block of luxury flats exactly where the Mulberry grows, which means that Tower Hamlets planning committee may be confronted with a choice between the tree or the building when the application is considered later this year. Yet it would be a simple matter to move the proposed building within the ample grounds of the former London Chest Hospital to allow the Mulberry sufficient space to flourish. With a little imagination, the flats could even be named Mulberry Court.
Crest Nicholson’s project is a vast overblown development with a very disappointing low level of ‘affordable’ housing, which includes hideous ‘heritage style’ alterations to the listed Chest Hospital building. I call upon them to show some respect to the wishes of local people by saving the Mulberry tree and reconsidering their whole development.
Tom Ridge, White Knight of East End Heritage Campaigners (Portrait by Lucinda Douglas Menzies)
Illustration of Bishop Bonner scourging a heretic from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, 1563
Crest Nicholson’s proposed development
You may like to read my other stories about Mulberries
Terry Bloomfield, Fish Dealer & Photographer
Terry Bloomfield was born in 1934 and grew up in Columbia Rd as the third generation of a family that worked at Billingsgate, where he ran his own shellfish business. Between 1982, when the market moved to the Isle of Dogs, and 2011, when Terry retired, he recorded the life of Billingsgate in thousands of black and white photographs which reveal a candid insider’s viewpoint of this extraordinary nocturnal phenomenon. You can visit an exhibition of these pictures at Standpoint Gallery in Hoxton from 23rd September – 1st October.
Photographs copyright © Terry Bloomfield
Terry Bloomfield’s exhibition runs from 23rd September – 1st October at the Standpoint Gallery, 45 Coronet St, Hoxton, N1 6HD
You may also like to read these other Billingsgate stories
