Robson Cezar, King of the Bottletops
If you are a regular in the pubs around Spitalfields, you may have noticed a man come in to collect bottletops from behind the bar and then leave again with a broad smile, clutching a fat plastic bag of them with as much delight as if he were carrying off a fortune in gold coins. This enigmatic individual with the passion for hoarding bottletops is Brazilian artist and Spitalfields resident Robson Cezar, and he needs to collect thousands because he makes breathtakingly intricate pictures with them.
Each day, Robson cycles from Spitalfields down to his studio at Tower Bridge where he delights to store his vast trove – the king of bottletops in his counting house – spending endless hours sorting them lovingly into colours and designs to organise his finds as the raw material for his very particular art. An art which transforms these ill-considered objects into works of delicacy and finesse, contrived with sly humour, and playing upon their subtle abstract qualities of colour and contrast.
It all started a couple of years ago, when he asked Sandra Esqulant at The Golden Heart in Commercial St to collect her bottletops for him. For months she gathered them conscientiously and it gave Robson the perfect excuse to drop in regularly. And last year, I showed you some smaller pictures he made, but over this last Winter Robson has begun creating larger, more elaborate bottletop works. As a consequence, Robson often sets out now to visit several bars each night to collect the harvest of bottletops which he needs, that is obligingly – if incidentally – created by the thirsty boozers of our neighbourhood.
And in return for the patronage of getting their bottletops, Robson makes pictures for the pubs. At first he made a golden heart in bottletops as a personal gift for Sandra, but when The Bell in Middlesex St offered him the opportunity to cover the exterior of the pub with bottletops, he seized the opportunity to do something more ambitious. Using over six thousand bottletops, and subtly referencing the colours of the red brick and the green ceramic tiles, Robson has contrived a means to unify the exterior of the building and render it afresh as a landmark with his witty texts. And since they were installed last year, people smile and stop in Middlesex St to take photographs when they catch sight of Robson’s bottletop panels on The Bell. With such eye-catching street appeal, Robson’s work is a natural complement to Ben Eine’s alphabet that he painted on all the shutters along this street last year.
A week ago, Robson’s latest picture was installed at the Carpenters Arms in Cheshire St where landlords Eric & Nigel have been obligingly collecting bottletops for over a year. Hung up on the roof beam in the bar, this is in a different vein from Robson’s works at The Golden Heart and The Bell – creating a stir among the regulars, who are puzzling over the choice of phrase SCREAM PARTNERS for the CARPENTERS ARMS. Go round to take a look yourself and if cannot work it out at once, then a couple of drinks will increase your powers of lateral thinking.
Robson Cezar came to Spitalfields in the footsteps of fellow Brazilian artist Helio Oiticica, who along with Caetano Veloso was one of the many Brazilian cultural exiles in London in the nineteen sixties. Oiticia staged an exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1967, introducing the new cultural movement of Tropicalia to Europe by recreating a favela in the gallery. And now Robson is creating his own Tropicalia here in the twenty-first century, reinventing this poverty aesthetic with a pop exuberance that reflects the cosmopolitanism of his own life experience – which began in a favela in Brazil and took him on a journey from South to North America and eventually to Europe, where he found his home in the East End of London.
Combining the sensibility of a fine artist with the painstaking technique of a folk artist, Robson’s bottletop pictures are egalitarian in nature yet sophisticated in intent. They look like signs but they are not signs, or rather they are pictures pretending to be signs. Their exquisite technique and colouration is a crazy joke in contrast to the misrule engendered by the volume of alcohol imbibed to produce this number of bottletops. Yet the lush shimmering beauty of Robson Cezar’s work enchants us with all the bottletops that litter our streets disregarded, and reminds us of all the other pitiful wonders of human ingenuity that we forget to notice.
At the Bell, Middlesex St.
At the Carpenters Arms, Cheshire St.
Why SCREAM PARTNERS at the CARPENTERS ARMS?
Portraits of Robson Cezar in his studio copyright © Sarah Ainslie
Artworks copyright © Robson Cezar
Robson Cezar’s work can be seen in two forthcoming exhibitions – at The Civic, Barnsley as part of (+55) Brazil opening on 15th September and running until 20th November, and at Islington Mill , Manchester as part of Eat, Use, Destroy opening on September 30th and running until 6th October.
The Oldest Ceremony in the World
Each night a lone figure in a long red coat walks down Water Lane, the narrow cobbled street enclosed between the mighty inner and outer walls of the Tower of London. Sometimes only his lamp can be seen through the thick river mist that engulfs him when it rises up from the Thames and pours over the wall to fill Water Lane, but he is indifferent to meteorological conditions because he is resolute in his grave task.
He is the Gentleman Porter and it is his responsibility to lock up the Tower, a duty fulfilled every single night since 1280, when the Byward Tower that houses the guardroom was built. And over seven centuries of repetition without remiss – day after day, down through the ages, through the Plague, the Fire and the Blitz – this time-hallowed ritual has acquired its own cherished protocol and tradition, becoming known as ‘The Ceremony of the Keys.” It is the oldest, longest running ceremony in the world, and it continues today and it will continue when we are gone.
John Keohane, the current Gentleman Porter ( a role also known since 1485 as the Yeoman Porter, and since 1914 by the title of Chief Yeoman Warder) invited me over to the Tower to watch the ceremony, and Spitalfields Life contributing photographer Martin Usborne was granted the rare privilege of taking pictures of a run-through for an event that at the request of the Sovereign has never been photographed.
“Welcome to my little house by the river,” declared John cheerily in greeting, “That’s what the Tower is, it’s my home.” There was a sharp breeze down by the Thames that night, and we were grateful to be led by John into the cosy octagonal vaulted guardroom in the Byward Tower which has been manned night and day since 1280 and has the ancient graffiti (Roger Tireel 1622, among others), the microwave and the video collection to prove it.
Here, John’s old friend Idwall Bellis, a genial Welshman, was preparing to spend a long night on duty.“People try to break in to the Tower of London all the time,” he confided with an absurd smile, explaining, “They climb into the moat and we contact the police to take them away. Occasionally, the Bloody Tower alarm goes off and no-one knows why, and sometimes foxes set off alarms too.” Like John, Idwall joined the Yeoman Warders in 1991 after a long army career and in the last twenty years he has seen it all, except one thing. “My predecessor Cedric Ramshall was here one night and the room filled with frost, he saw two men in doublets with long clay pipes standing at the fireplace and they pointed at him.” he revealed, gesturing to the spot in question, “He never spent another night in here again.”
At 9:53pm, it was time for John to light the huge old brass lantern, take up his bunch of keys and venture out into the glimmering dusk, mindful of the precise timing of the seven minute ceremony that must finish on the exact stroke of ten. The only time this did not happen, he informed me, was 29th December 1940 when a bomb fell within fifty feet and blew the warders off their feet. They picked themselves up, completed the ceremony and wrote a letter of apology to the King for being three minutes late – and he graciously replied to say he fully understood because of the enemy action taking place overhead.
Leaving the guardhouse, John walked alone with his lantern down Water St to the entrance to the Bloody Tower where he picked up an escort of Tower of London Guards uniformed in red with bearskins on their heads, who returned down Water Lane with him to the gates. “At the Middle Tower, I meet Mr Bellis and together we lock, close and secure the gates, while the soldiers offer us protection,” he explained to me with uncomplicated purpose. This prudent addition to the ritual was made in 1381 when an elderly Gentleman Porter was beaten up and left for dead by protesters against Richard II’s poll tax.
My heart leapt in my chest when, as the black doors closed upon the modern City with a thunderous bang, centuries ebbed away and I found myself suddenly isolated in the medieval world, in the sole company of soldiers in scarlet uniforms in a pool of lamplight in the ancient gatehouse – just as I might have done any time in the past seven hundred years. Once the huge doors were shut and barred, while a pair of guards stood on either side and a shorter one held up the lamp as John turned the key in the lock with a satisfying clunk, then the escort reformed and marched swiftly together back down Water Lane into the gathering darkness, with John Keohane at the head, leaving Idwall Bellis to return to his cosy guard room.
Keeping discreetly to the shadows, I followed down Water Lane, creeping along beneath the vast stone walls towering over me. It was at this moment that a sentry stepped from the shadows – in the dramatic coup of the evening – challenging those approaching out of the dusk, crying, “Halt! Who comes there?”With barely concealed affront, John halted his escort, announcing, “The keys!” And in a bizarre moment, centuries of repetition was rendered into the present tense, happening for the first time – as those involved embraced the irresistible drama of the instant and the loaded gun pointed at them.
“Who’s keys?” persisted the sentry – turning either dimwitted or subordinate. “Queen Elizabeth’s keys,”announced John, citing the Sovereign who is his direct employer. “Pass Queen Elizabeth’s keys, for all is well!” responded the sentry, a stooge stepping back into the shadow.
And then John, accompanied by his escort, marched triumphantly up into the precinct of the Tower where he met a contingent of guardsmen, waiting sentinel at the head of the stone steps. They presented arms and the clock started to chime, permitting eleven seconds before the stroke of ten. In a moment of brief exultation, spontaneous even after twenty years, John took two paces forward, raising his Tudor bonnet, and declaiming, “God Preserve Queen Elizabeth!” Finally, a bugler played the last post and the clock struck ten as he made his way up the steps to report to the Constable that the Tower was locked for the night.
The guard marched away to their barracks and I stood alone beneath the vast white tower, luminous with floodlight, and I cast my eyes around Tower Green that was my sole preserve in that moment. Then John returned, descending the staircase, and we walked down to the Bloody Tower where the young princes were murdered by their uncle Richard III and where Walter Raleigh was imprisoned for thirteen years. And before John Keohane and I shook hands and said our “Good Nights,” we lingered there for a moment in silent awe at the horror and the beauty of the place.
Idwall Bellis sits all night in the guard house waiting for people to break into the Tower of London.
The keys to the Tower of London and the lantern.
“Halt, who comes there?”
“The Keys!”
Photographs copyright © Martin Usborne
You may also like to read about
John Keohane, Chief Yeoman Warder at the Tower of London
Beating the Bounds at the Tower of London
The Ceremony of the Lilies & Roses at the Tower of London
Constables Dues at the Tower of London
The Bloody Romance of the Tower
You can apply to attend the Ceremony of the Keys through Historic Royal Palaces. A limited number of guests are permitted each night and it is free. Please apply at least six weeks in advance and be sure to include several alternative dates in your application which must be accompanied by a stamped addressed envelope.
Residents of Spitalfields and any of the Tower Hamlets may gain admission to the Tower for one pound upon production of an Idea Store card.
Mr Pussy in Summer
Those of you that luxuriate in the warmth of Summer, spare a thought for Mr Pussy who has a fur coat surgically attached and spends his languorous days stretched out upon the floor in a heat-induced stupor. As the sun reaches its zenith, his activity declines and he seeks the deep shadow, the cooling breeze and the bare wooden floor to stretch out and fall into a deep trance that can transport him far away to the loss of his physical being. Mr Pussy’s refined nature is such that even these testing conditions provide an opportunity for him to show grace, transcending dreamy resignation to explore an area of meditation of which he is the supreme proponent.
In the early morning and late afternoon, you will see him on the first floor window sill here in Spitalfields, taking advantage of the draught of air through the house. With his aristocratic attitude, Mr Pussy seeks amusement in watching the passersby from his high vantage point on the street frontage and enjoys lapping water from his dish on the kitchen window sill at the back of the house, where in the evenings he also likes to look down upon the foxes gambolling in the yard.
Whereas in Winter it is Mr Pussy’s custom to curl up in a ball to exclude drafts, in these balmy days he prefers to stretch out to maximize the air flow around his body. There is a familiar sequence to his actions, as particular as stages in yoga. Finding a sympathetic location with the advantage of cross currents and shade from direct light, at first Mr Pussy will sit to consider the suitability of the circumstance before rolling onto his side and releasing the muscles in his limbs, revealing that he is irrevocably set upon the path of total relaxation.
Delighting in the sensuous moment, Mr Pussy stretches out to his maximum length of over three feet long, curling his spine and splaying his legs at angles, creating an impression of the frozen moment of a leap, just like those wooden horses on fairground rides. Extending every muscle and toe, his glinting claws unsheath and his eyes widen gleaming gold, until the stretch reaches it full extent and subsides in the manner of a wave upon the ocean, as Mr Pussy slackens his limbs to lie peacefully with heavy lids descending.
In this position that resembles a carcass on the floor, Mr Pussy can undertake his journey into dreams, apparent by his twitching eyelids and limbs as he runs through the dark forest of his feline unconscious where prey are to be found in abundance. Vulnerable as an infant, sometimes Mr Pussy cries to himself in his dream, an internal murmur of indeterminate emotion, evoking a mysterious fantasy that I can never be party to. It is somewhere beyond thought or language. I can only wonder if his arcadia is like that in Paolo Uccello’s “Hunt in the Forest” or whether Mr Pussy’s dreamscape resembles the watermeadows of the River Exe, the location of his youthful safaris.
There is another stage, beyond dreams, signalled when Mr Pussy rolls onto his back with his front paws distended like a child in the womb, almost in prayer. His back legs splayed to either side, his head tilts back, his jaw loosens and his mouth opens a little, just sufficient to release his shallow breath – and Mr Pussy is gone. Silent and inanimate, he looks like a baby and yet very old at the same time. The heat relaxes Mr Pussy’s connection to the world and he falls, he lets himself go far away on a spiritual odyssey. It is somewhere deep and somewhere cool, he is out of his body, released from the fur coat at last.
Startled upon awakening from his trance, like a deep-sea diver ascending too quickly, Mr Pussy squints at me as he recovers recognition, giving his brains a good shake, now the heat of the day has subsided. Lolloping down the stairs, still loose-limbed, he strolls out of the house into the garden and takes a dust bath under a tree, spending the next hour washing it out and thereby cleansing the sticky perspiration from his fur.
Regrettably the climatic conditions that subdue Mr Pussy by day, also enliven him by night. At first light, when the dawn chorus commences, he stands on the floor at my bedside, scratches a little and calls to me. I waken to discover two golden eyes filling my field of vision. I roll over at my peril, because this will provoke Mr Pussy to walk to the end of the bed and scratch my toes sticking out under the sheet, causing me to wake again with a cry of pain. Having no choice but to rise, accepting his forceful invitation to appreciate the manifold joys of early morning in Summer in Spitalfields, it is not an entirely unwelcome obligation.
You can read more about Mr Pussy here:
The Pump of Death
See these people come and go at the junction of Fenchurch St and Leadenhall St in the City of London in 1927. Observe the boy idling in the flat cap. They all seem unaware they are in the presence of the notorious “Pump of Death” – that switched to mains supply fifty years earlier in 1876, when the water began to taste strange and was found to contain liquid human remains which had seeped into the underground stream from cemeteries.
Several hundred people died in the resultant Aldgate Pump Epidemic as a result of drinking polluted water. Obviously a distant memory by the nineteen twenties, when Whittard’s tea merchants used to “always get the kettles filled at the Aldgate Pump so that only the purest water was used for tea tasting.”
Yet before it transferred to a supply from the New River Company of Islington, the spring water of the Aldgate Pump was appreciated by many for its abundant health-giving mineral salts, until – in an unexpectedly horrific development – it was discovered that the calcium in the water had leached from human bones.
This bizarre phenomenon quickly entered popular lore, so that a bouncing cheque was referred to as “a draught upon Aldgate Pump,” and in rhyming slang “Aldgate Pump” meant to be annoyed – “to get the hump.” The terrible revelation confirmed widespread morbid prejudice about the East End, of which Aldgate Pump was a landmark defining the beginning of the territory. The “Pump of Death” became emblematic of the perceived degradation of life in East London and it was once declared with superlative partiality that “East of Aldgate Pump, people cared for nothing but drink, vice and crime.”
Today this sturdy late-eighteenth century stone pump stands sentinel as the battered reminder of a former world, no longer functional, and lost amongst the traffic and recent developments of the modern City. No-one notices it anymore and its fearsome history is almost forgotten, despite the impressive provenance of this dignified ancient landmark, where all mileages East of London are calculated. Even in the old photographs you can trace how the venerable pump became marginalised, cut down and ultimately ignored.
Aldgate Well was first mentioned in the thirteenth century – in the reign of King John – and referred to by sixteenth century historian, John Stowe, who described the execution of the Bailiff of Romford on the gibbet “near the well within Aldgate.” In “The Uncommercial Traveller,” Charles Dickens wrote, “My day’s business beckoned me to the East End of London, I had turned my face to that part of the compass… and had got past Aldgate Pump.” And before the “Pump of Death” incident, Music Hall composer Edgar Bateman nicknamed “The Shakespeare of Aldgate Pump,” wrote a comic song in celebration of Aldgate Pump – including the lyric line “I never shall forget the gal I met near Aldgate Pump…”
The pump was first installed upon the well head in the sixteenth century, and subsequently replaced in the eighteenth century by the gracefully tapered and rusticated Portland stone obelisk that stands today with a nineteenth century gabled capping. The most remarkable detail to survive to our day is the elegant brass spout in the form of a wolf’s head – still snarling ferociously in a vain attempt to maintain its “Pump of Death” reputation – put there to signify the last of these creatures to be shot outside the City of London.
In the photo from 1927, you can see two metal drinking cups that have gone now, leaving just the stubs where the chains attaching them were fixed. Tantalisingly, the brass button that controls the water outlet is still there, yet, although it is irresistible to press it, the water ceased flowing in the last century. A drain remains beneath the spout where the stone is weathered from the action of water over centuries and there is an elegant wrought iron pump handle – enough details to convince me that the water might return one day.
Looking towards Aldgate.
The water head, reputed to be an image of the last wolf shot in London
The pump was closed in 1876 and the outlet switched to mains water supply.
Molly the Swagman
Make no mistake, Molly is a swagman. It is a title that carries its own raffish assertion of independence, there are no swagwomen, only swagmen and Molly is a proud swagman. She told me it all began with her great-grandfather who was a swagman on Petticoat Lane and he lived to be ninety-nine. And now I shall expect no less from Molly herself – because there is no doubt that, as a fourth generation swagman, she is the shrewd inheritor of the good humoured perseverance which is required to achieve longevity in market life.
Although I always knew the word “swag” from comic books where masked burglars have it written on their sacks, it was Molly herself who first explained to me that, “Swag is when you are selling a variety of goods, from clothes to jewellery – anything you can find.” And she gave me a significant glance of complicity, which led me to assume there might be a shady history, before returning to her plate of bacon and egg accompanied by a pile of toast, that formed the primary focus of her attention at that moment. We were enjoying a hearty breakfast in Dino’s Cafe in Commercial St, huddled together round a small table at the back with Molly’s old friend Jimmy Cuba and Ellen, her loyal associate from the market, completing the party.
“My first market was down the lane,” Molly confided in tender reminiscence, pushing the empty plate to one side and lifting her mug of tea,“I was about three, toddling around on my first day in Petticoat Lane where we lived. The house where I was born, it was in Leyden St, number six. My great-grandfather had the pitch and it went down through the family, that’s how it was in those days. Anything you could sell, he would sell it. He was a dodgy dealer, he used to do deals. My grandfather, my father and uncle were all in it too. They used to hire a cab for the day and go to the races together sometimes. Uncle Bob and grandad used to front the stall, while my father was the money behind the scenes. My father had the advantage of going to school, my grandmother was in films so she sent her two sons to boarding schools. He was a very snappy dresser, when he had some money he used to go and get two new suits made. He had the whole look, the cufflinks and the polished shoes. ‘You have to dress up to do business,’ he said. Grandad sold linens off the back of the van and Uncle Bob was the one with china, he threw it up in the air. And I used to take the money, it’s where I learnt to add up.”
Molly’s pedigree as a swagman imparts a certain singularity of attitude which baulks no condescension, and graces her with a sharp line in back chat to accompany it. “If they say, ‘You’ve got to give me a discount.’” recounted Molly, raising her eyebrows in delight and assuming a hoity-toity voice, “I say ‘Why? Do I know you?” Then she chuckled to herself, recalling another recurring dialogue. “Those yuppies, they ask ‘If I buy this, can I get this free?’ So then I put on my best Cockney voice…” she continued, placing a hand on my forearm and assuming an archly demure manner, “and I say, ‘Here love, come back next week, when you’ve got a bit more money.’” Chuckling, again and launching into a raucous self parody, “They’ve got to be hedge-ucated!” she declared with a triumphant grimace, pressing the ball of her hand on the table in response to the general mirth of those of us who comprised her audience.
I learned that Molly’s experience is not restricted to market life, because for five years, she worked as girl-Friday to Peter Grant, the manager of Led Zeppelin and, as we sipped tea and digested our breakfasts, she regaled Jimmy, Ellen and me with her tales of the rock and roll years. “The boys used to call me ‘ma’.”she revealed shyly, “I knew them all, Mickie Most, Adam Faith and the rest. They all came down to the country where I used to cook breakfast for the guests, walk them round the house and make up these fantastic ghost stories. When I was down there, I treated them just like anybody else. One day this tall blond guy came down with his laundry, so I showed him how to work the machine – that was Robert Plant.” At this point, Jimmy Cuba contained himself no longer, interposing, “This was when Led Zeppelin were the biggest band on the planet!” and Molly smiled bashfully, blushing a little to recall her days as a rock chick now.
Each Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, you will see Molly stalling out in the Spitalfields Market with Ellen at her side, the lone swagman with her modest swag spread out before her on the table. Even after all these years Molly cannot predict each day’s trading, market life is akin to gambling in that way. The two self-effacing women preside like sentinels, whispering together about the ceaseless spectacle passing before them. For Molly, it is a fleeting show, because she is the living representative of the three that came before her and it gives her a unique sense of perspective. Market life has made her circumspect and she would not tell me her full name or even reveal the name of her great-grandfather who lived to be ninety-nine. Yet I was honoured to speak with her because Molly is an extraordinary woman, dignified, witty and with great strength of character, and she is the last of the Spitalfields swagmen.
Jimmy Cuba & Molly
Ellen, Jimmy & Molly outside Dino’s in Commercial St.
Colin O’Brien’s Clerkenwell Car Crashes
Accident, daytime 1957
When photographer Colin O’Brien lived at Victoria Dwellings on the corner of Clerkenwell Rd and Faringdon Rd, there was a very unfortunate recurring problem which caused all the traffic lights at the junction to turn green at once. In the living room of the top floor flat where Colin lived with his parents, an ominous “crunch” would regularly be heard, occasioning the young photographer to lean out of the window with his box brownie camera and take the spectacular car crash photographs that you see here. Unaware of Weegee’s car crash photography in New York and predating Warhol’s fascination with the car crash as a photographic motif, Colin O’Brien’s car crash pictures are masterpieces in their own right.
Yet, even though they possess an extraordinary classically composed beauty, these photographs do not glamorise the tragedy of these violent random events – seen, as if from from God’s eye view, they expose the hopeless pathos of the situation. And, half a century later, whilst we all agree that these accidents were profoundly unfortunate for those involved, I hope it is not in poor taste to say that, in terms of photography they represent a fortuitous collision of subject matter and nascent photographic talent. I say this because I believe that the first duty of any artist is to witness what is in front of you, and this remarkable collection of pictures which Colin took from his window – dating from the late forties when he got his first camera at the age of eight until the early sixties when the family moved out – is precisely that.
Yesterday, I accompanied Colin as he returned to the junction of the Clerkenwell Rd and Faringdon Rd in the hope of visiting the modern buildings upon the site of the former Victoria Dwellings. To our good fortune, once we explained the story, Tomasz, the superintendent of Herbal Hill Buildings, welcomed Colin as if he were one of current residents who had simply been away for the weekend. Magnanimously, he handed over the keys of the top flat on the corner – which, by a stroke of luck, is currently vacant – so that Colin might take pictures from the same vantage point as his original photographs.
We found a split-level, four bedroom penthouse apartment with breathtaking views towards the City, complete with statues, chandeliers and gold light switches. It was very different to the poor, three room flat Colin lived in with his parents where his mother hung a curtain over the gas meter. Yet here in this luxury dwelling, the melancholy of the empty rooms was inescapable, lined with tired beige carpet and haunted with ghost outlines of furniture that had been taken away. However, we had not come to view the property, we had come to look out the window and after Colin had opened three different ones, he settled upon the perspective that most closely correlated to his parents’ living room and leaned out.
“The Guinness ad is no longer there,” he commented – almost surprised – as if, somehow, he expected the reality of the nineteen fifties might somehow be restored up here. Apart from the blocks on the horizon, little had changed, though. The building on the opposite corner was the same, the tube embankment and bridge were unaltered, the Booth’s Distillery building in Turnmills St still stood, as does the Clerkenwell Court House where Dickens once served as cub reporter. I left Colin to his photography as he became drawn into his lens, looking back into the midst of the last century and upon the urban landscape that contained the emotional history of his youth.
“It was the most exciting day of my life, when we left,” admitted Colin, with a fond grin of reminiscence, “Canvassers from the Labour Party used to come round asking for our votes and my father would ask them to build us better homes, and eventually they did. They built Michael Cliffe House, a tower block in Clerkenwell, and offered us the choice of any flat. My parents wanted one in the middle but I said, ‘No, let’s get the top flat!’ and I have it to this day. I took a photo of lightning over St Paul’s from there, and ran down to Fleet St and sold it to the Evening Standard.”
Colin O’Brien’s car crash photographs fascinate me with their intense, macabre beauty. As bystanders, unless we have specialist training, car crashes only serve to emphasise the pain of our helplessness at the destructive intervention of larger forces, and there is something especially plangent about these forgotten car crashes of yesteryear. In a single violent event, each one dramatises the sense of loss that time itself engenders, as over the years our tenderest beloved are taken from us. And they charge the photographic space, so that even those images without crashes acquire an additional emotionalism, the poignancy of transience and the imminence of potential disaster. I can think of no more touching image of loneliness that the anonymous figure in Colin O’Brien’s photograph, crossing the Clerkenwell Rd in the snow on New Year’s Eve, 1961.
After he had seen the interior of Herbal Hill Buildings, Colin confided to me he would rather live in Victoria Dwellings that stood there before, and yet, as he returned the keys to Tomasz, the superintendent, he could not resist asking if he might return and take more pictures in different conditions, at a different time of day or when it was raining. And Tomasz graciously assented as long as the apartment remained vacant. I understood that Colin needed the opportunity to come back again, now that the door to the past had been re-opened, and, I have to confess to you that, in spite of myself, I could not resist thinking, “Maybe there’ll be a car crash next time?”
Accident in the rain.
Accident in the rain 2.
Accident at night, 1959.
Snow on New Year’s Eve, 1961.
Trolley buses, nineteen fifties.
Clerkenwell Italian parade, nineteen fifties.
Firemen at Victoria Dwellings, nineteen sixties.
Have a Guinness when you’re tired
Colin’s new photograph of the junction of the Clerkenwell Rd and Faringdon Rd view from Herbal Hill Buildings that now stand on the site of the former Victoria Dwellings.
Colin O’Brien sees his childhood view for the first time in fifty years.
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
More photographs by Colin O’Brien
Travellers’ Children in London Fields
Colin O’Brien’s Brick Lane Market
Mark Petty, Trendsetter
This is what I consider a classic Mark Petty outfit. It has the high-waisted flares, wide lapels and tie – all in a vibrant colour scheme – and Mark wears it with the audacious flair that we have come to expect from him. Anyone that frequents Brick Lane on a regular basis will be familiar with Mark and his boldly coloured leather suits, because he has honoured us by adopting these streets as his stage, or rather his catwalk, upon which he performs his celebrated theatrics of fashion.
Mark and his clothing have become part of the fabric of our neighbourhood, and it always lifts my spirits to spot him among a crowd of unremarkably dressed people, bringing a splash of eye-catching colour to elevate the scene. It is a joy that is compounded when I see him later in an entirely different outfit – an event which can occur several times in the same day, increasing the delight and admiration of the many residents who hold Mark in high esteem, as our self-styled ambassador for colour.
Amongst all the snazzy dressers of Shoreditch, what makes Mark special is that he designs his own clothes, not merely to look fashionable but as an unmediated expression of himself. More than anyone else I can think of Mark uses clothing to express who he is. He shows how he feels – revealing his inner self openly – and in the process his liberationist example has become an inspiration to us all.
“The reason I started was because in the seventies I was too young to wear the fashions, and by the time I was old enough flared trousers had gone,” explained Mark as we sat in his pink living room in a quiet corner of Bethnal Green, “So I went round to Mr Singh at Batty Fashions in the Bethnal Green Rd to see if he could make me some. I have no training in fashion yet I cut my own cardboard patterns, though it wasn’t easy at first doing flares.
I tried going out in Bethnal Green and the reaction was very hostile – from children who threw bottles at me – but I thought, ‘I’ll persevere because fashion is too drab and life should be full of colour.’ I’m not the kind of person that gives in. So I went to Ridley Rd Market in my lilac seventies outfit and on the whole the reaction was good. I find each area is different, you can’t ascertain in advance whether you’ll get mugged or chased. The older people here say, ‘You’re a rebel,’ and I get requests to wear particular outfits. My most popular request is for pink.
I’ll never forget the gang of Scottish football supporters I met at a bus stop in Shoreditch High St, they said, ‘It takes a lot of nerve to wear what you’re wearing.’ and asked to be photographed with me. Hopefully something good will come of it and people will realise that life isn’t all beige and black, and you need to express yourself. It needs a kick up the backside. When I went to Tottenham, where they all wear baseball caps, track suits and have designer dogs, they said,’You’re ruining our culture!’ In Croydon, when they realised I was from East London, they said, ‘We don’t get a lot of people from the North here.’
I moved to London from Essex sixteen years ago. I was born in Oxford but my mother decided to marry and live in Essex. I had a problem in Essex at school because I had a West Country accent. They said, ‘You’re a foreigner so we don’t like you!’ My mother’s been there thirty years now and they still say to her, ‘You’ll never be one of us.’ I was forced out of of Braintree. It was all over the newspaper headlines. Once you come through that you can come through anything. I used to lie on the floor of my flat with my three cats in the dark and pretend to be out. This went on for months, until they came round at night with flaming torches and smashed all the windows.
Moving to London, I found people in pubs and clubs very cold, and I settled in London in Tottenham on the Broadwater Estate which had a fearsome reputation. I thought, ‘I’m here on my own,’ so I got Rose an English bull terrier, but it was quite terrifying even walking to the park with the dog. As they said to me in Islington when they saw my outfit, ‘There’s not a lot of people that’s got the courage.’
I must know everyone in Bethnal Green now, they say, ‘You’re quite a celebrity round here,’ but I never thought of it that way, I just did what I had to do. We had a lot of builders round here last year, so I used to try my designs out on them to see what they thought, unfortunately they’ve gone now. I used to get a lot of offers but none have been taken up. I went to Walthamstow Market recently and the girls were holding their boyfriends’ hands because they were looking at me rather than their girls. If only people could experiment more and show their bodies. Even women here dress like men. The worse thing they ever did was invent the remote control, no-one gets any exercise anymore.
I’ve noticed in Romford and Ilford that guys are starting to wear pink. You’d expect it to be the little skinny ones but it’s the big butch guys. A woman said to me in Bethnal Green Tesco, ‘You’re corrupting our men! It’s dirty and perverted.’ I said, ‘That’s pathetic.’ Her twenty-four year old son wants to dress like me apparently and I get the blame. If people don’t express themselves they’re always repressed, but you only have one life and you have to live it as you think fit. The kids still abuse me and the police are useless, so I have to take care of myself. You have to stand up to them. They say they don’t like how I look, and I tell them, ‘If you don’t like it you can put up with it,’ because I’ve been through so much that I’m not going to be persecuted anymore.”
It was a painful journey Mark travelled to realise the truth of himself and square up to the violence, hatred and ignorance he confronted as a consequence of his emotional honesty. Yet in the face of this resistance he has discovered moral courage. I was humbled to recognise Mark’s strength of character as he told his stories filled with magnanimous humour and sympathy for his tormentors.
Nowadays, the clothing he adopted as a declaration of fearless independence has become Mark’s life and, as we talked, he produced outfit after outfit to show me, each more extravagant than the one before. Simultaneously his armour and his joy, Mark takes great delight in his multicoloured wardrobe which incarnates the transformation act he has pulled off to emerge as the peacock of Brick Lane.
“A bit of colour highlights people’s moods,” Mark declared as, with a beaming smile, he proudly modelled his pink leather trousers with cupcake applique motifs which he created as a homage to a dress he saw Fanny Craddock wear. There is a certain holy innocence about Mark, like the jesters of old who were licensed to speak what no-one else dare say. It still takes courage for him to go out, but Mark Petty is a kind man who discovered bravery in the face of cruelty, and a neighbourhood dandy we are all proud to know.
Mark Petty aged nine, in the nineteen seventies.
You may also like to see Mark Petty’s Multicoloured Coats
