Brussels Midwinter

Scenes from the wintry streets of the Belgian capital just after the war, part of a batch of found photographs taken by a British serviceman on duty in Northern Europe.  They make an interesting record of the city in painful transition from war into peace.  Powdery snow gathers between the cobblestones and freezes in the gutters while pedestrians hunch up against the cold. The swastikas have been burned and the streets are free of the emblems of occupation. Commercial life is returning and the trams are running.  There are posters on display in the Place de Brouckère for Un Bal Surréaliste at the Academie du Beaux Arts (Salle de la Madeleine) on February 8th. - a frivolity that could never have happened under occupation. With privately owned vehicles in short supply, traffic is light and there are long queues at the tram stop. Some landmark buildings can be identified including the Monumental Palais de Justice and the Hotel Metropole (which closed in 2020). The photographer has composed with care and discovered unexpected poetry in the near deserted cobbled streets dusted with snow.

 

Les Rois du Pavé

This book offers a dazzling excursion through the streets of Paris in the years leading up to the Great War when the streets and pavements were the workplace for thousands of traders, performers, labourers and confidence tricksters. For some the challenge was to buy low and sell high with the greatest profits going to those with the greatest flair for theatrics. Almost any daily necessity - bread, fruit and veg could be bought on the street, along with carpets, ice cream, barometers and chestnuts. Others had only their bodies to sell, from sex workers to sandwich-board men. Some were prepared to be transformed into mobile advertisements – see the man promoting the merits of Bière Celtique with an outsize bottle attached to his hat and the brand name printed on his trousers. Selling services was another popular strategy and offered employment to knife-grinders, street photographers, basket menders, tooth pullers and public letter-writers without the expense of an office, studio, workshop or surgery. There were many for whom the pavement was a performance space for demonstrations of physical skills and endurance or a place of entertainment with musicians, conjurors, bird-charmers, mime artists and puppet theatres.

This activity was only possible because of the efforts of road menders and pavers whose back-breaking toil kept the streets in good order. No less essential was the contribution of the street sweepers, the sewer workers and the forces of law and order. Bus, tram and taxi drivers kept a constant flow of potential customers along the boulevards. Another group had nothing to sell but their labour and they formed a small army of refuse collectors, porters, water carriers and lamplighters. Lowest of all in status were les mégottiers who gathered up the discarded cigar and cigarette ends as part of an exercise in extended use. These were citizens of the lower orders who supported themselves by wit and ingenuity, driven outdoors by necessity to persuade the passing public to pay for their products or services. This book finally honours a marginalised community of the economically disadvantaged that brought colour and vitality to the streets of the city.

It’s no surprise to see more than a few of these photos were taken by Eugène Atget but the net had to be cast wider and the Agence Roger-Viollet was a productive source. The great majority of images are from the author’s (Jean-Louis Celati) personal collection and may well be scanned from vintage postcards. None the worse for that, all the images are remarkable for their definition and clarity. The human subjects confront us in all their complexity, sometimes diffident, sometimes defiant but most often simply absorbed in their tasks. There are smiles of triumph, smiles of contentment and there are stony faces that give nothing away. And it’s not entirely a lost world – many of these activities persist into the present despite the best efforts of capital to privatise public space and designate them as a public nuisance. To see further examples, see the 2010 blogpost, Emperors of the Highways.

The Edge of the World

Penzance has the feeling of a town on the edge of Britain. With only the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Great Western Railway’s westward expansion came to an abrupt stop here. A well established local independent bookshop chose its name accordingly. When we visited in March, new shop premises were in preparation and shop-fitters were installing the final section of fascia panelling. Which made for a nice pair of photos and served as an encouraging sign of defying conventional wisdom which holds the days of local high street bookselling are all but over.

Praha všedního dne – Everyday Prague 1959

This is a selection of Prague photographs from the 1950s, published in 1959 with the title Praha všedního dne (Everyday Prague). Erich Einhorn (1928-2006) was the photographer and on this evidence, a highly accomplished and unusually observant practitioner. The images show a high level awareness of European, American and Soviet photo-traditions, plus an instinct for prowling the streets and seizing the moment. From 1955, Einhorn was employed as a photo-journalist on the newly founded newspaper, Večerní Praha which suggests the photos in this book were taken as part of, or alongside, his day-job. Elevated viewpoints alternate with street level shots. There’s an acute sensitivity to the potential of shadows as compositional elements and some straightforward Pictorialism, relieved by an eye for the incongruous. The layout of the book is carefully considered with pairings chosen for their complementary characteristics. Double page spreads are used sparingly but effectively. Einhorn’s other photobooks include travelogues (Prague Castle, Spas of West Bohemia) as well as additional urban studies of Prague and Moscow.

Postcard of the Day No. 79 – New York Blizzard

We can trace the photographic origin of today’s card to an 8 by 10 inch glass negative in the collection of the Library of Congress. Taken in the Great Blizzard of 1899 on behalf of the Detroit Publishing Co. and cropped for a postcard that was copyrighted in 1906. Colour was applied and the result has an almost cinematic sense of immediacy. Bright light reflected from the wet paving stones haloes the foreground female figure that strides purposefully into the composition. An elevated train rumbles overhead, a streetcar passes by and snow shovellers are making desultory efforts to clear the street. According to Robert C Reed (in The New York Elevated, 1978, p. 114) the location is midtown on the Sixth Avenue elevated, probably near Herald Square.

Below is another example of a street scene recorded from the sidewalk, this time underneath the elevated tracks in the Bowery. Most street photography on postcards takes a distant, more detached viewpoint and images taken from the sidewalk are relatively unusual. Which is a shame as we get a much more intense documentary feel – a powerful evocation of the sights and sounds of a busy city street. Trains thrash overhead, horse-drawn vehicles and streetcars occupy the roadway and all the long lost detail – shop windows, theatrical poster, cast-iron balustrading and the ties that span the street and brace the twin viaducts supporting the elevated railroad can be examined at leisure. The final card shows a scene that even Edward Hopper may have rejected as excessively dystopian. A street corner where two trains, vertically stacked clatter past with an ear-piercing grinding of metal on metal that can hardly be imagined. Magnificent as it was as an emblem of the metropolitan sublime, it’s easy to see why the presence of the elevated was so greatly resented by those compelled to live and work in its perpetual shadow.