Shot in Soho is an exhibition of photographs documenting life in the Soho district of London over the past 60 years or so.
It is not is an encyclopedic, systematic or historical overview. Instead it consists of generous selections from half a dozen or so specific photographic ‘projects’ made by particular photographers – some historic i.e. dating back to the 1960s, others made more recently, in the 2000s or 2010s. Three of them were commissioned specially for this exhibition by the Photographers’ Gallery, along with a series of podcast interviews of local inhabitants.
Although the sets are deliberately not hung in chronological order, I found it easier to make sense of them chronologically. And to give away the plot, in my opinion the first two sets of black-and-white photos, from the 1960s, were head and shoulders above the rest in terms of style, atmosphere, composition and impact.
The Undressing Room by John Goldblatt (1968) BLACK AND WHITE
Born in 1930, Goldblatt emigrated to South Africa in 1955, where he earned his living as a photographer. He returned to the UK and worked for publications like The Sunday Times, The Jewish Chronicle and The Observer. He took the series of photos on display here on four consecutive nights backstage at a Soho strip club on spec . Unfortunately, they didn’t sell, which is surprising because this set includes by far the best photos in this exhibition.
Take this photo of an ‘exotic dancer’ reading the paper in the dressing room. Not only is this almost nude young woman very sexy, but it is the composition – the lining up of her vertical leg with the leg of the woman behind; the way both legs take your eye to the electric heater in the background – reminding you how cold and draughty most of these backstage rooms probably were, especially in the wet and windy winter. It is the 45 degree angle of the newspaper balanced on her thigh, the simple unstyled 60s look of her hair falling over her shoulder, the way the other girls in the background are looking round, maybe aware of the photographer, but she is sweetly oblivious, absorbed in what she’s reading. It’s lots of things which make this photo so evocative and memorable.
Untitled from the series The Undressing Room (1968) by John Goldblatt © John Goldblatt. Courtesy of the artist’s estate
Soho Observed (1968) by Kelvin Brodie BLACK AND WHITE
Back in the 1960s Brodie (b.1932) worked on assignments for the Sunday Times covering routine street works and accompanying police and charity workers in Soho, snapping young people caught up in its criminal underworld or, at the other end of the social spectrum, some of the area’s ancient shopkeepers.
Kelvin Brodie for the Sunday Times Magazine (1968) © Times Newspapers Ltd
Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of Soho by William Klein (1980) COLOUR
Then the visitor makes the huge leap to colour, albeit a grainy analogue, pre-digital kind of colour,
American-born French photographer William Klein (b.1928) was commissioned by the Sunday Times to do a photo feature on Soho. His rough and ready street shots capture the Soho I knew when I first visited it as an impressionable teenager, full of ugly people with manky haircuts, wearing flairs, smoking fags – look at the men on the left. Men from C&A.
Shoes polisher, Rocky II etc, Piccadilly 1980 by William Klein © William Klein
The Brewer Street Work (1990 to 2013) by Corinne Day
Day was born in 1962 and died in 2010. Most of her personal and professional work was shot in a flat she kept in Brewer Street, at the top of a 1930s block. The Raymond Revue Bar was across the road. At the end of the working day, friends or models or artists would drop by and Day photographed them all.
Day is famous, apparently, for doing a photo-shoot with the then 16-year-old Kate Moss, which made both their reputations. The photos on show here capture a rough and grimy, rather dirty flat, with rollups and empty booze bottles rolling on the floor as cool young people smoke, drink, joke and pose for her camera. The same kind of vibe as Tracey Emin and her famous bed. 1990s cool young pretty things.
Georgina Cooper, Interview Magazine ‘That Imaginary Line’ January 1996 by Corrine Day © The Corrine Day Archive. Courtesy of the Corrine Day Archive
The Colony Room Club (1998 to 2001) by Clancy Gebler Davies
Born in 1966 Davies blagged her way into the famous private members’ club and was eventually asked to join. When she ran up a huge bar bill the owner offered to let her work it off by working as bar staff. Part of the reason for being a member was you could drink as much as you wanted, late into the night. The owner let Davies take her photos once she’d gained everyone’s trust. The result is a series of photos of people – mostly men – getting drunk and behaving drunkenly.
The Colony Room Club (1999 to 2000) by Clancy Gebler Davies © Clancy Gebler Davies. Courtesy of the artist
Soho 2011 by Anders Petersen BLACK AND WHITE
Petersen (born in 1944) was commissioned specially by the Photographers’ Gallery to make a project in Soho in 2011. Published as a book, Soho 2011 captures night time embraces and drunken performances for the camera. He befriended locals in the street, in pubs and cafes and bars, shot them in situ or invited them back to his studio. He uses high contrast and graininess to create a sense of drama.
Soho 2011 by Anders Petersen © Anders Petersen
Looking for Love (2018) by Daragh Soden
Soden (b.1989) was commissioned specially by the curators of this exhibition to create a contemporary portrait of the area. He responded by thinking of Soho as a place where people ‘hunt for love or lust’. Pardon me for heaving a big, heavy sigh at the sheer stereotyped inevitability of that approach. According to the wall label his project ‘examines how we perform and relate in the pursuit of love, sex, romance’. So. Yet another series of photos of sexy chicks and cocktail glamour.
Looking for Love by Daragh Soden (2019) © Daragh Soden
Soho Then (2018 to 2019) by Clare Lynch
The show is rounded out with a series of podcasts. There’s a bench, we’re invited to sit on it and put on the headphones hanging on it, and listen to a series of six podcasts by Soho residents who reminisce about specific streets and buildings in this compact grid of streets, cafes, bistros, shops and bordellos. This series was actually commissioned by the Photographers’ Gallery itself.
Thoughts
In the later 1980s and throughout the 1990s I worked in television production (as researcher, assistant producer, producer, producer/director and then series producer), at offices and studios just north of Oxford Street.
Sometimes at lunchtime, and especially in the evenings, I went strolling down into Soho to windowshop or meet mates for a drink. I had my stag night in Soho in 1997. I worked at quite a few independent edit suites in Soho. This exhibition didn’t really capture the Soho I knew and experienced for quite a long time on a daily basis.
For a start all artists and curators are obsessed with sex, which they dress up in the smart terminology of gender and desire. Still shagging, though. In terms of photography – naked people, strip clubs, prostitutes, dingy streets, and the looming threat of policemen, all create an agreeably louche atmosphere, a Weimar 1930s vibe, it makes everyone feel a lot more continental than we really are. Makes prostitution seem a lot more glamorous than it is. None of these photographers seem to have uncovered any use of drugs or people trafficking or violent pimps on any of their travels.
But in any case you can walk round Soho during the day and not notice any of that night-time stuff. What you see is the shops – the shops and bistros and restaurants, which often had a wonderfully cosmopolitan flavour, testament to the French, Italian, Maltese, Chinese, Hungarian, Jewish and Bengali populations. Lunchtime in the pub, evening meal at the Gay Hussar, then cramming into the Coach and Horses to hear the legendarily rude landlord Norman shouting at people. I did all that twenty five years ago.
There’s nothing at all here about the music shops. After leaving the gallery I went into Schott’s music shop and browsed some sheet music before dropping into the Yamaha shop and playing a very expensive electric guitar which the shop assistant kindly plugged into a big amp in a soundproof practice room. None of that, nothing about shopping which is a far more popular and democratic activity than sex, in any of these ‘projects’.
Nothing at all either about the TV and film editing suites, let alone the fact that many film and advertising companies have lined Wardour Street since the 1960s. The people who work in those swish offices don’t get pissed and hang out with hookers in the evenings, the Americans in particular were ruthlessly efficient and professional in my day. None of the slick professionalism of the advertising, TV and film worlds of Soho appears in any of these ‘projects’.
And the markets. I often stopped in at Berwick Street Market on the way home of an evening, loving walking past the thronged stalls loaded with fresh food, artisan bread and, oh my God, the wonderful cheese stall which I can still smell twenty five years later.
And the media clubs. The Groucho Club has been in Dean Street since 1985 and the Soho House in Greek Street since 1995. I was never a member of either but was taken along by people who were, meeting loads of media and showbiz celebrities. On one memorable evening in 1996 at the Soho House I mingled with a big party of New Labour consultants, cocky arrogant bright young things who knew they were going to win the next election and were celebrating in advance with ice buckets of champagne and by nipping into the bogs to snort a line and emerge motor-mouthing how fabulous Tony and Gordon were. The point is there’s nothing here about the upmarket, glitzy world of TV, film and media in the area.
And the music, live music. Did it occur to no-one to include something about Ronnie Scott’s world-famous jazz club, or the Marquee or the Vortex Club, or to photograph musicians making live music in any of the modern clubs?
No. Strip clubs, models, drinking and snogging are the order of the day. To sum up, then, this exhibition presents a very narrow and tendentious image of Soho as a land of strip clubs and skinny models, cops and boozers and private clubs where people can behave appallingly – which was only ever a fraction of the truth.
The exhibition – ironically – completely misses out on Soho’s genuine diversity, not just its sexual diversity, but its class and professional and employment diversity – the real weirdness or urban thrill of watching blue-overalled delivery men carrying boxes of fresh fruit past the Ann Summers shop while a couple of pony-tailed video editors pop into a sandwich bar and three men in smart suits emerge from the Warner Bothers offices, a motorbike courier goes past carrying fresh rushes to an edit suite, while a group of advertising account handlers come out of a late lunch at Wagamama, and the outside tables along Old Compton Street are filled with queers sipping lattes and admiring each others’ poodles.
Soho was and is much, much more interesting than this exhibition conveys. In fact this exhibition could almost be taken as a sort of epitome of how narrow and impoverished in outlook and experience modern art and photography can be.
Curators
- Julian Rodriguez, Head of the Department of Film & Photography, Kingston School of Art, Kingston University
- Karen McQuaid, Senior Curator, The Photographers’ Gallery
Related links
- Shot in Soho continues at the Photographers’ Gallery until 9 February 2020
- John Goldblatt’s The Undressing Room photos online
Books & Boots 