Penguin Village Life

Life In An English Village 
Sixteen Lithographs by Edward Bawden 
Introductory Essay by Noel Carrington 
A King Penguin Book 
Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1949

The Vicar

The Methodist Chapel

The Junior School

The Child Welfare Clinic

Sunday Evening

The Cabinet Maker

The Bell

The Butcher

The Tailor

The Saddler's Shop

"All illustrations made by the artist directly onto zinc lithographic plates. They are therefore originals and not reproductions of drawings made on paper."

Whitechapel Posters

The Graphic Century 
Hannah Vaughn (ed.)
Whitechapel Gallery
London, 2009.

I've been to a lot of shows at the Whitechapel over the years, many good, a few indifferent, none that I remember being poor. Perhaps any bad ones are best forgotten. 

This book collects posters promoting their exhibitions, graphic designs trying to capture the artistic aesthetic or spirit of each show.
Here is a selection mostly from my favourite period from the early 1950s to the late 70s.

Me So Hornsey

The Hornsey Affair 
Students and Staff of Hornsey College of Art 
Penguin, Middx, 1969

Everyone knows about the soixante-huitards, the French student revolution of May '68, the birth of Situationism and the beach beneath the pavement, right? Worn as a badge of honour by Parisians of a certain age, they certainly made their mark on social history despite being flattened by the Gaullist authorities when total revolution seemed within their grasp.

Less well known are the events that occurred simultaneously on the other side of La Manche, in a leafy corner of North London. The students at Hornsey College of Art were browned off with the authorities and decided the answer was a 'sit-in' (it was the 60s) and three days of rambling debates between themselves and the college staff. 

The film I posted the other day gives a more immediate impression of the events than this little paperback can muster, but the text gives a more complex flavour of the way both sides articulated their thoughts. Plus some nice student illustrations. The counter-culture may have been crushed but the ideals remain.

Good Fortune

A Fortunate Man
John Berger and Jean Mohr (photographer)
Allan Lane, 1967
(this cover Penguin, 1969)

A wonderful collaboration between writer John Berger and photographer Jean Mohr, observing the life of an English country doctor in a small rural community in the mid-1960s. Berger's reportage and left-leaning social commentary is concise, admiring the many qualities of the doctor and the village in which he works, while acknowledging their limitations and the problems they face in a changing world.

Swiss photographer Jean Mohr worked with Berger on at least three further books, him imagery capturing the small-scale, timeless rustic beauty of the landscape, and achieving an intimacy with the locals that echoes their close relationship with their doctor. This is the same world inhabited by the lyrical documentaries 'Requiem for a Village' and 'The Moon and the Sledgehammer', capturing the end of an age as old country practices were dying out in the face of economic pressures and rapid social and technological changes.

In fact, this volume is almost a documentary film in a book. The design layout gives generous space to images and has a carefully considered composition of word and image. This truly is a photobook, images complimenting text and also acting in place of words when an image better communicates a point. 

One can hear Berger's voice as narrator and Mohr's photography is perfect in revealing the locale and the relationship and emotions of the doctor and his patients. Contemporary NHS managers would be advised to read this book and consider the deeper role of rural GPs within the society they care for.

They don't make faces like these any more.

It is noted in the book that the doctor, John Sassall, was prone to periodic deep depression, plagued by self-doubt and worries about his inadequacy and inability to help his fellow man. Fifteen years after the book's publication Sassall shot himself, an act which Berger suggests makes the tone of the book not darker but more mysterious. Thanks to Berger and Mohr, both current members of the medical profession and general reader alike will still empathize with the doctor's predicament.

Live BergerFest event this week at the Royal College of Art.

Bizarro World

Bizarre
compiled by Barry Humphries
London, Elek Books, 1965

Yes, it is the same Barry Humphries as Dame Edna Everidge, with a little help from John Wells and Willie Rushton from the Private Eye gang. A miscellany of freaks, peccadilloes and peculiar essays and poetry.