Roger Mayne

"Over a period of three days in 1956, a young photographer, Roger Mayne, explored Southam Street, North Kensington, and photographed the children and street life. This London back street became his stalking ground for five years, resulting in one of the great social documents of the era. In 1963 the street and the surrounding area was declared unfit for habitation. By 1969 it had been demolished. Roger Mayne recorded the newly arrived immigrants and the vitality of the street culture. The pictures represent a vanished age, in which child's play, though rumbustious, is marked by innocence. Behind the poverty lay cherished community values which vanished alongside the demolished fabric of the neighbourhood." "Colin MacInnes, whose novel Absolute Beginners described Notting Hill in that period so accurately, praised Mayne's work. His pictures appeared on numerous Penguin book-jackets during the sixties. After the birth of his own children, he continued to photograph in the privacy of his family. He was much influenced by his friends among the painters of St. Ives. For years he has photographed in the Mediterranean and in the landscape of the West Country near his home in Lyme Regis. He is admired by photographers as diverse as Bruce Weber and Don McCullin, and is regarded as one of the masters of British photography."--Jacket.