Janet Mendelsohn, The street (c.1968). Black and white photographic print. Courtesy Cadbury Research Library: Special Collections, University of Birmingham.
“YOU’LL MISS US WE’LL MISS YOU” – a billboard left on the front of an abandoned shop sentimentally reminds us of its closing. The building where it’s housed is bookended on both sides by demolition sites, standing alone in a crumbled landscape. It’s 1968 in the Birmingham’s slum of Balsall Heath, but this image of desolation is reminiscent of wartime Britain.
Originally an elegant 19th century middle class suburb, by the 1960s Balsall Heath had become known for being Birmingham’s major red light district and a centre for migration. The once large and elegant Victorian houses fell into decay, subdivided into multiple-occupancy flats that catered for immigrants from the Caribbean and south Asia. The core of the slum, the infamous Varna Road, had long been associated with prostitution and “vice”, described as “The wickedest road in Britain” by the press.
In the autumn of 1967, Janet Mendelsohn, a young Harvard graduate, arrived in Birmingham as a visiting student of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS). Formed three years earlier by literary scholar Richard Hoggart, the centre’s main scope was to undertake serious research into “mass culture”. (Hoggart had gained public notoriety thanks to his defence of D. H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” (1960), whose publication had caused a trial for obscenity against Penguin Books). Scholars and students at CCCS soaked in a mix of critical theory, Marxism and sociology, and applied a rigorous reading of magazines, pop music, films, newspaper and television programmes. In the spirit of experimentation that characterised the centre’s approach to study, Mendelsohn was encouraged by Hoggart to explore ways in which photography could be used in field search.
Janet Mendelsohn, The street (c.1968). Black and white photographic print. Courtesy Cadbury Research Library: Special Collections, University of Birmingham.
Janet Mendelsohn, Pimps and a cop on the street (c.1968). Black and white photographic print. Courtesy Cadbury Research Library: Special Collections, University of Birmingham.
Mendelsohn specifically headed for Varna Road, for its particular social fabric that combined poverty, immigration and prostitution. The project resulted in an archive of 3,000 photographs and interviews with her subjects, a selection of which is currently being showed at IKON gallery.
The photographer gives us an extraordinary insight into the lives of the immigrants and the sex workers living in the slum, facing the challenges of daily life while the neighbourhood around them is being drastically changed. As part of the Labour government’s slum clearing programme of the 1960s, the demolishers were scheduled to enter Varna Road and Balsall Heath’s streets in 1969. Birmingham was eventually following the fate of other British cities, an isolated town being turned into a modern city.
Mendelsohn’s research lies in this conjuncture. The photographs focus on a relatively limited area: Varna Road, its shops, a cafe curiously decorated with scenes from Hindi films. Mendelsohn’s focal point and her key to enter the Balsall Heath community is a prostitute referred to as Kathleen. Mendelsohn documented Kathleen’s family and life with particular sensibility, through interviews and a series of poetic shots. In them, we see the sex worker at the window soliciting passers-by, standing in the street waiting for clients, interacting with her partner-turned-pimp.
When Mendelsohn wants to emphasise the interior life of her subject, she chooses richly toned close-ups full of melancholy. Kathleen’s resilience and affection are shown through moments of candid beauty with her new-born at the hospital, for instance, or while playing with her kids at home. Considering that photographer and subjects had little in common, Mendelsohn’s pictures are characterised by a surprising sense of empathy, and are full of humanity. The original purpose of her research is also often betrayed by a striking composition, bringing her images closer to art than to a mere reportage.
Janet Mendelsohn, Kathleen hanging out (c.1968). Black and white photographic print. Courtesy Cadbury Research Library: Special Collections, University of Birmingham.
Janet Mendelsohn, Kathleen and her newborn son (c.1968). Black and white photographic print. Courtesy Cadbury Research Library: Special Collections, University of Birmingham.
Janet Mendelsohn, Kathleen outside the bar (c.1968). Black and white photographic print. Courtesy Cadbury Research Library: Special Collections, University of Birmingham.
Mendelsohn’s work on Balsall Heath reminds closely of a specific genre in photography, coming from the great American tradition of photo survey. If the first half of the 20th century had seen American photographers reporting on different social issues (from child labour to farmers’ living conditions), documentary photography during the 1950s and 1960s had turned into something more visceral, connected with its subjects. The idea of the photo survey had developed into a more personal affair. The well-educated and bright Mendelsohn must have known Robert Frank’s work on American life, “The Americans” (1958), which is a fundamental example of this new sensitivity based on a more poetical way of considering the photographic medium.
Although extremely talented, Mendelsohn chose not to pursue a career as photographer. The image archive composing Varna Road stands as the fortunate result of an episode in Mendelsohn’s creative life, that went too quickly forgotten.
Janet Mendelsohn, Kathleen and Salim at home (c.1968). Black and white photographic print. Courtesy Cadbury Research Library: Special Collections, University of Birmingham.
Her photographs and interviews with Kathleen and her family formed the source material for a photo essay entitled “Varna Road”, published in spring 1969 in the University of Birmingham’s cultural review.
Had it been shown more widely at the time, her work would have probably appeared next to other great photographers’ investigations on post-war Britain, such as Mary Ellen Mark’s reportage on heroin addicts for Look magazine (1970), or Diane Arbus’ gaze on the British for the Sunday Times in the 1960s. With this exhibition, IKON finally does justice to Mendelsohn’s work, by unearthing it and placing it in the realm of art.
Text by Francesco Dama
Janet Mendelsohn: Varna Road continues at IKON Gallery, Birmingham, until 3 April 2016
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