Classic Street Style Exhibition Brochure

Summer, the Lower East Side, 1937 by Weegee © ICP New York

CLASSIC STREET STYLE 30/07/22 - 09/10/2022

Weegee / New York Doisneau / Paris Forsyth / Newcastle

SIDE GALLERY

Introduction Weegee and Robert Doisneau are two of the world’s most famous and renowned documentary photographers whose work is held in the AmberSide Collection. They are exhibited alongside Jimmy Forsyth, an outstanding and revered ‘local’ photographer whose engaging images documented the spirit and transition of Newcastle’s West End. Weegee, Doisneau and Forsyth all took a humanistic approach in documenting the rhythm of life that surrounded them, but all did so in their unique way.

Weegee developed a direct and uninhibited style, juxtaposing grandeur with destitution and highlighting the spectacle of life alongside the shock of sudden death in the “City That Never Sleeps”.

Doisneau poetically captured everyday life in the working-class Parisian suburbs with warmth, optimism and humour. He showed the world as he would like it to be.

And Forsyth had the insight to recognise the transience of his community and their lived environment in a small area of the west end of Newcastle and took the time to document its changing state.

The three exhibitions remind us that although human environments may differ and are in a perpetual state of flux, the human condition remains endlessly fascinating and constant.

These photographs provide a candid view of everyday life of those people who called New York, Paris and Newcastle their home in the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

Weegee / New York

‘Time Is Short’ War Rally in Broome Street, Little Italy, 1942 © ICP New York

“The policemen and the firemen would say, “Whadda you got? A ouija board?

You’re here before I am?” He was the first man to have a newspaper radio in his apartment and also in his car so that he could go to sleep with one ear ‘cocked’ so that he did get to places. Out of the comment of the ouija board came the nickname ‘ouija’, which he chose to spell W.E.E.G.E.E.” Wilma Wilcox (Weegee’s Widow) Weegee, the photographer whose images came to define New York, was born Usher Fellig in 1899 in Austria (now a part of Ukraine). He became

Arthur Fellig when the family emmigrated to America in 1909. He was raised in a Yiddish-speaking household on the Lower East Side of New York; his father was a peddler, hat salesman, and part-time Rabbi. Fellig also worked many jobs prior to becoming ‘Weegee the Famous’, including as a passport photographer, commercial photographer’s assistant, and darkroom assistant. In 1935, at the age of thirty-six, he boldly quit his darkroom job to become a freelance photographer, then a new and uncertain profession.

Photography became the perfect vehicle for his curiosity and fascination for the city and its inhabitants, which was funded by print media’s voracious appetite for content. With an early reputation cemented through his dramatic capture of the city’s twilight world and criminal underbelly, closer examination of his work reveals a far greater depth, range and understanding of the stark and subtle contradictions, friction, sparks and joyous realities to be found in the society he presented.

Accused “Cop Killer,” 1941 © ICP New York

At a Jazz concert in Harlem, 1948 © ICP New York

‘Simply Add Boiling Water’, 1943 © ICP New York

“His mind was constantly working on pictures. He lived his life as a photographer. Now granted, he did most of this at night, but he was very aware of what was going on around him – everywhere. He had a Chevvy Coupe, and he roamed the city at night, getting pictures that no one ever found.” - Wilma Wilcox (Weegee’s Widow) His now iconic images show us a ‘warts and all’ insider view of the extremes of life during the economic trauma of the Great Depression and beyond. With a direct and uninhibited style, he juxtaposed grandeur with poverty and highlighted the spectacle of life alongside the shock of sudden death in ‘The City That Never Sleeps’. He captured the gangland murders, brutal crimes, accidents and devastating fires that impacted the lives of the city’s inhabitants, who existed cheek by jowl in tenements and on the streets, through sweltering summers and harsh winters. However, he also documented their ability to survive and find moments of unbridled joy and love, testifying to the resilience of human nature.

Side Gallery hosted the first European exhibition of Weegee’s work in 1981.

In 2008, Amber Films produced the documentary Weegee the Famous, featuring Wilma Wilcox and Sid Kaplan, the renowned printer of the Weegee Portfolio, which is available to watch at www.amber-online.com

USEFUL LINKS Weegee images and information available on our website: https://tinyurl.com/jbrjz445 A short film made by Amber which includes interviews with Weegee’s widow Wilma Wilcox and Sid Kaplan the celebrated printer responsible for producing the Weegee Portfolio: https://tinyurl.com/rk86pb9w

Doisneau / Paris

The Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville, 1950 © Atelier Robert Doisneau

Robert Doisneau (1912 – 1994), born in Gentilly, Paris, is one of France’s most noted photographers. An internationally renowned pioneer of photojournalism and a champion of humanist photography. During his long career, his poetic approach to street photography recorded everyday life in often playful and surreal images. Choosing to concentrate on the suburbs, which are often regarded as banal, Doisneau wanted to “shed some light on those people who are never in the limelight”, and his patience allowed him to capture the fleeting moments of meaning, beauty and humour in such lives.

Doisneau (pronounced Dwano) became an amateur photographer at the age of sixteen but was initially so shy he preferred to capture inanimate objects such as the cobblestones and architecture of his local environment, only progressing to human subjects sometime later. “When I first started to take photos, I’d pull the black cloth over my head and feel totally secure in the knowledge that no one could see me.”

In 1934 he was employed by Renault during its pre-war peak as an industrial advertising photographer at the car factory in Boulogne-Billancourt, a suburb of Paris. At Renault, Doisneau discovered a new world of workers’ solidarity and dignity that he was never to forget. He recorded the life of the company, photographing the workshops and production lines while also working for the publicity department. Five years later, in 1939, he was dismissed from his post for constant lateness. Doisneau’s mischievous and irreverent personality shone through when discussing the matter: “Disobedience seems a vital function for me, and I must say I haven’t missed many opportunities for it.”

A Sideways Glance, 1948 © Atelier Robert Doisneau

Dog on Wheels, 1977 © Atelier Robert Doisneau

Children in Herbert Place, 1957 © Atelier Robert Doisneau

Shortly afterwards Doisneau was hired by the Rapho Photographic Agency but his career was put on hold at the outbreak of World War II. He was drafted into the French army, but left the military in 1940 and, from then until the end of the war, used his draughtsmanship, lettering artistry, and engraving skills to forge passports and identification papers for the French Resistance. After the war had ended, he quickly became re-immersed in photography with great zeal, creating his most notable work.

Doisneau’s innate shyness never left him, and he photographed his subjects at a respectful distance. It was a self-imposed constraint that proved beneficial to his photography, allowing for space around his subjects and for their backgrounds to have significance. He photographed a vast array of people and events in images marked by an exquisite sense of humour, anti-establishment values, and above all, his deeply felt humanism.

The particular interest he took in working-class environments led to images rich in poetic social realism, which profoundly influenced the film and literature of its time. This exhibition contains some of his most iconic photographs, which have become synonymous with our romantic notions of Paris.

Doisneau has long been an inspiration to the work of the Amber Collective, in particular Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen. Amber’s Murray Martin travelled to meet with Doisneau in Paris with a portfolio of Konttinen’s work to share and discuss. The prints in this exhibition are selected from those gifted to Amber by Doisneau and which now form part of the AmberSide Collection.

USEFUL LINKS Official Doisneau website: www.robert-doisneau.com Illuminating interview with Doisneau’s daughter about her father: https://tinyurl.com/yc723km8

Forsyth / Newcastle

“Talleymen”, 1957 © TWAM

“When you’re taking a photograph, you’re recording something that will never happen again, catching a moment in time. I was just capturing what I knew was going to disappear.”

In 1981 Side Gallery brought the work of Jimmy Forsyth to a wider public.

His photographs of the Scotswood Road area of Newcastle, taken during the 1950s and early 60s, have become a rare and important document of a working-class community on the edge of irreversible change.

Forsyth came to Newcastle in 1943. He was born and grew up in Barry, South Wales, an industrial town not unlike the west end of Newcastle.

He settled into the Scotswood Road community quickly, getting a job as a fitter in Prudhoe, but a few years later suffered an industrial accident and lost an eye. After that, finding another job proved difficult. But, as he said, “If it wasn’t for my accident, I’d probably never have photographed Scotswood Road.”

In the early 1950s, Forsyth bought himself a cheap camera from a pawn shop and started taking pictures of his neighbourhood. “Plans were already in the air for knocking Scotswood Road down…When they knocked down the Infirmary in 1954, a curious crowd gathered to watch. It was then that I realised someone should make a record of what was left of the community. I had nothing to do. Why not make a record of Scottie Road to pass the time? It would show future generations what we looked like and how we lived.”

Tank, Gloucester Arms, 1957 © TWAM

Outside the Royal Oak, 1956. © TWAM

Demolition men, 1956 © TWAM

Yolande Gladders on Vic’s Housey-Housey Stall, 1957. © TWAM

Over the next ten years, Jimmy Forsyth took pictures of all the streets, pubs, shops, and people he knew so well. Being one of the few locals with a camera, he quickly became their photographer, albeit unofficial and unpaid. He usually managed to sell enough of his Boots processed prints to be able to buy the next roll of film. He carried on recording the wholesale demolition of the area and the building of the high-rise flats that replaced the terraced streets. Other photographers documented similar communities in other parts of Britain during the fifties and sixties.

Still, none had the same insight, the same intimacy with their subject as Forsyth.

USEFUL LINKS Jimmy Forsyth images and information available on our website: https://tinyurl.com/2p8e86df Des Walton was a local historian and archivist who worked in Newcastle Libraries for over 50 years. In this YouTube video he talks about Forsyth and his work: https://tinyurl.com/5xryptdp

About Side Gallery Side Gallery has been committed to exhibiting the best in international humanist documentary since 1977, our concerns rooted in a longterm engagement with working class, marginalised and threatened communities in the North of England – and by extension with the experiences of those documented by some of the finest photographers working across the world.

We are committed to preserving and making accessible these extraordinary bodies of work, whilst using them to inform, lever and sustain the new production that will continue to take documentary practice forward.

Side is centrally concerned with visual narratives: the quality of the imagery; the aesthetic and moral questions that are raised; sharing stories of the world to our local community and wider society and beyond.

Please support our work by making a donation today: https://www.amber-online.com/support/

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