Review: 07: Photography Exhibition

07, a portrait of Seven Dials and Covent Garden by three photographers, is a charming glimpse  into the life of an engaging, complex and historic part of London.

The work of Edward Haynes and Michael Duke essentially captures the experience of the visitors. In these two series of photographs, we see the street performers, the arcade shops, fantastical cream cake concoctions seen through shop windows, and a great many pigeons. Haynes' camera expresses such a fondness for this most iconographic of city birds, that the familiar backgrounds become a kind of smear: a modest version, perhaps, of the pigeon portraits we more commonly see with St Mark's Basilica in the background. Their wings flap in fullness, like blown over peony blooms.

Duke, on the other hand, describes a Covent Garden which feels remote from the viewer, and which identifies with other lost souls. A woman out shopping with friends appears caught up in her own thoughts, looking towards the camera but poignantly unaware of it. The wealth of things to be bought are contained by plate glass windows: you can look but you can't touch. 

If both of these photographers present an external view of Covent Garden, a kind of photographic travel diary, then Rory Lindsay makes a foray into getting under the skin of the place. Lindsay made four nocturnal trips resulting in 7 serious studies that also engage with the genre as explored by Suschitzky and other well known city photographers in the last century.

Lindsay's large format portrait of the empty but luminous Piazza and glistening cobblestones, is stately, and worthy for a postcard: you could be forgiven for thinking that it was taken in the 1950s when it was still operational as a fruit and vegetable market, at some ungodly hour. Hard to imagine that Lindsay would have been standing just by Paperchase when he took this. 

I particularly like the portraits of passageways. One of these depicts the narrow alley at the end of Rose Street which is steeped in history. The 2nd Earl of Rochester had John Dryden beaten up on this spot in 1679. The illuminated sign 'Saloon Bar', points to the entrance to the Lamb & Flag where Dickens drank -  Dickens that is, and the entire life of Covent Garden: the tradesmen, the actors, the whores, the flower sellers, the stage crews past and present (it bisects the route between the Coliseum and the Royal Opera House). Lindsay's portrait captures all of that glossy darkness and the menacing allure.

This and particularly the other photographs taken in Floral Street carry a familiarity to anyone who knows the area well. Lindsay does so without nostalgia or sentimentality and a strong sense of the moment.

Portraits of Enzo Plazzotta's 1988 bronze of the Young Dancer and Wilkinson Eyre's 2003 Bridge of Aspiration are more obvious, but Lindsay nevertheless handles them with the practised eye of a magazine photographer. 

But I cannot think of this exhibition without also feeling a sense of irony and forboding. If these photographs begin to touch on the wealth of Covent Garden's identity, both historically, and also in how it wishes to present itself now in terms of the arcades, visitors, street entertainers, and many varied small businesses, then what of the future? Interesting that none of these three photographers have chosen to remark upon the high street retailers (led by one much lauded flagship store) which increasingly have been allowed to encroach upon the Piazza and encourage a rent rise which is starting to threaten to drive out the small businesses at the heart of this thriving community. 

Article © Dody Nash 2011

Notes:

Image: Covent Garden Piazza by Rory Lindsay  www.rorylindsay.co.uk

Exhibition runs 27 May - 8 July, Mon-Sat 12-6pm, Seven Dials Club 42 Earlham St London WC2

All works are for sale: prices start at £375

Dody Nash is a designer and artist working in opera, dance and public spaces