Another London

London is so massively rich in colour. It is a city painted over in a blanket full of rainbow-like dots and brisk brush strokes. It is a place where the people of London are the reflection of this immensely colourful light and this stark shade of colour on the city’s blank canvas.

So why was it then, that when I walked into the Tate Britain’s exhibition ‘Another London’, it was a seemingly dark, grey room filled with a bleak sea of monochromatic images, supposedly depicting London’s colourful city lifestyle?

Felix Man, '10 years ago, Victory Day, The lights go up in London 1945’

It was because the exhibition was a display of black and white photographs which were taken in London between 1930 and 1980.  Forty-one well-known and foreign photographers, explored themes of class, identity and race in their images as the exhibition aimed to depict London’s hugely diverse existence.

Neil Kenlock's photograph of a racist attack in Balham, 1972

The photographs (to my surprise) actually turned out to be successfully and shockingly stunning as well as impressive in all their colourlessness. I think this is partly because we are usually so saturated with colour these days in London that we often overlook the simple linear shapes and beauty of everyday life which are so wonderfully and refreshingly captured in the black and white images displayed in the ‘Another London’ exhibition.

Kenlock's 'Keep Britain white' photograph was one of the images that really stood out for me. There was no hiding in this picture and I think that was the beauty of it. It really made me realise how far London has come in its lifetime...

Bruce Davidson’s Girl holding kitten, London 1960

Another favourite of mine was Bruce Davidson’s portrait of a young girl holding a kitten as it proved to be surprisingly beautiful as well as delightfully haunting... 

Perhaps, this photograph was so successful because it was not one of the many stereotypical images depicted at the exhibition. There was no double-decker buses emerging from the persistent fog or men porting London’s infamous black bowler hats. It was more a depiction of London’s sense of strangeness, its loneliness. Davidson’s photograph essentially captures a young girl who has been suffocated by the cosmic city. She has been swallowed up and regurgitated like a fur ball and left not only isolated, but abandoned too.

'Another London' - the space and layout

Moving on, it was apparent that the exhibition setting was almost laid out like the streets of London.  It was arranged to take you on an experience, a journey, not only through the gallery itself, but also into the city’s past. The gallery’s sweeping wooden floor filled with viewers perfectly replicated London’s street open busy roads full of people. The space equally had London’s hidden corners.

However, this impressive layout unfortunately suffered somewhat from what I like to call 'the conveyor-belt effect'.  People were practically pressed up against the photographs, blocking out almost the entire view of the display for other people to see and admire. This resulted in the shuffling and bustling of people in a singular moving queue around the outlying pathways of the gallery, which happened to be rather irritating for some.

Yet, whilst humming around the exhibition, it was heart-warming to see so many elderly people. It was so nice to watch their faces of familiarity as they looked up at the photographs with deep admiration and nostalgia.

Ultimately, this provocative and particularly poignant exhibition really encouraged me to continue to play with taking photographs, to explore the beauty and simplicity of the black and white image and to really study the medium of photography itself. 

The exhibition even made me think about how today's photograph is tomorrow's document of social history. It made me question what record I am unwittingly immortalising each time I raise the camera to my innocent eye? Hm...