Roger Mayne

About

It includes his pioneering photographs of 1950s and early 1960s community life in London’s Southam Street. Mayne’s humanistic approach has influenced subsequent generations of photographers, and made a significant contribution to post war British photography.

Also featured are examples of Mayne’s less well known work from outside the Capital, including early work in Leeds where Mayne first developed his photographic interests. These pictures of street life around the city chart his development from pictorialism to his characteristic realist style. Between 1961-65, Mayne was commissioned to photograph the newly developed estate of Park Hill in Sheffield. His photographs captured both the nuance of daily social interactions and the sharp angles, shades and abstract forms of the urban environment.

At the Raleigh Cycles in Nottingham in 1964, Mayne embraced the dynamic setting and low lighting of the factory to produce a series of dignified portraits of the workers in his distinctive black and white tonality. Restaged for the first time since 1964 is Mayne’s pioneering installation The British at Leisure. Commissioned by architect Theo Crosby for the Milan Triennale it features three-hundred and ten colour images projected on five screens to a commissioned jazz score by Johnny Scott.

The exhibition is co-curated by Anna Douglas and Karen McQuaid, in collaboration with Katkin Tremayne, Roger Mayne’s daughter.