An extraordinary visual document about childhood. Hardcover + dj, 120 pp., quadratone photographs
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
This book, reminiscent of early Bill Brandt and with a touch of Helen Levitt and Ruth Orkin, is a touching study of the children of post-war London's street. Ovenden later became a noted photo historian while also continuing to take his own pictures. The work is more edgy reportage than sentimental kitsch, though he remains eminently sympathetic to his subject matter. -- Photo Metro, Volume 17, Issue 155
With candor, uncanny timing and a great eye for spontaneous composition, Ovenden documented a moment when children were not little adults--they had their own identity and their own world. -- Photo Metro, Vol 17, Issue 156, pp. 34-35.
With candor, uncanny timing and a great eye for spontaneous composition, Ovenden documented a moment when children were not little adults--they had their own identity and their own world. -- Photo Metro, Vol 17, Issue 156, pp. 34-35.
From the Publisher
As a teenager, British artist Graham Ovenden spent many weekends roaming the streets of London (primarily the East End) photographing its busy street life. (For the first several years Ovenden used a cheap Brownie camera; in his late teens he acquired a 35mm.) "Childhood Streets," which more than 35 years later collects Ovenden's photographic explorations, is important both as an historical document and as an artistic achievement.
The work evokes a post-War, but pre-modern, London before the automobile had completely transformed it, rendering London's streets unsafe as a place for children to play. The work also shows London before the dilapidated Victorian tenements of the East End were torn down to make way for housing projects, before shopping centers began to replace London's many street markets and before children moved their play indoors to be near the television. It was a remarkably different world.
Although Ovenden was mostly unaware of the history of photography at the time, these images parallel other great photographs of metropolitan streetlife - for example, those of Doisneau, Brassa, Cartier-Bresson, Helen Levitt, and above all Bill Brandt. Whitechapel Shoe Shop, 1963' has the surreal quality of Atget's turn-of-the-century views of Paris shop fronts, Stepney, 1959' has the suffused air of a nineteenth-century calotype, while Old Woman, Stepney, 1957' strongly echoes The Crawlers' from John Thompson's "Street Life of London" series shot a century ago. In addition to these masterfully confident images, there are the many images of young girls (which would become the focus of Ovenden's later work as a painter): skinnydipping in the park, trying on clothes at the street markets, shopping and running errands with, or for, their parents, minding their younger siblings, or just playing in the street alone and in playgroups.
Some of the images here are truly astounding and one has to remind oneself constantly that these images were taken by a teenage amateur photographer (a rarity in the history of photography in any case). Visible even then was Ovenden's painterly eye and his love of the rough graphic quality which can be achieved in photography -- intense grain, strong contrasts, the chiarascuro of the blurred image.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Timeless photographs of a time which is gone,
This review is from: Childhood Streets (Hardcover)
If you buy this book you're certainly looking for such books - so the pure mass of photographs of children may not make you as uncomfortable as me in the first moment. It is a kind of document of a time, when children could play safely on streets, bath naked on a rivers bank, roam through streets as if they were a continuation of there flats. I don't know if Mr. Ovenden have had more and other things photographed, *this* is a rest of what was the result of his strolls through London in his youth, and so, while you can clearly see that he have had an artist's eye so early, it is also sometimes the limitation of the camera, what makes the picture perfect (while technical imperfect). Take this book if you wish to know something about this time (end fithies/early sixties) and how children have lived, no other book I know has this very special focus (and is obtainable).
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful Collection!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Childhood Streets (Hardcover)
This book is a beautiful collection of older black-and-white photos of children. Most of the photos were created on the streets and they show us how life looked like some 50 years ago, especially for children. Graham Ovenden made these photographs as a teenager and that shows that even back than he had a talent for making art. I am very blessed to own this beautiful collection and I would recommend this book to anyone interested in historic photography and in the subject of children in the photography which makes this book even more kind, unique and beautiful. And for the end, thank you Graham for creating something so pretty that will last forever!
4.0 out of 5 stars
Photography of Childhood in Black & White,
By
This review is from: Childhood Streets (Hardcover)
Simply put, this is a book of photographs of children on the street. They play together, sit and watch people go by, shop, skinny dip in the local park, and mingle with adults. The photographs are purely black & white. They are large, almost full page photos showing various children in a number of everyday children's activities. The photos were all made in the late 1950's and early 1960's.
With the exception of one photograph, all the rest are clear and in fine detail. And what I really like about the book is that each photograph is on an individual page by itself. I'm giving this book 4 stars for the simple reason of the one photograph which is difficult to view, otherwise, it is a splendid book.
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