From the loft

The other day I was alerted to a batch of extraordinary photographs from the 1920s by a member of staff at the museum, named Gareth Malone. It was explained to me that these images had been damaged… all of them suffered from chipped corners, hairline fractures and surface abrasions. When I viewed these offender photographs on my PC screen however, this damage was easy to ignore and other qualities – intimate, non-coercive, jovial and disarmingly relaxed – became apparent.

The portly and self-possessed individual named ‘Saddler’ (shown above) best captures the self-confident, defiant unflappability I discerned in some of these photographs. His ‘body language’ reminded me of that of H. Ellis who graced the cover of the museum’s 2005 book, City of Shadows. The homburg hat, elegant wool-knit tie, cuffed suit pants and brightly polished 10-hole leather boots, suggested a certain amount of slick and knowing (and possibly ill-gotten) affluence. And the facial expression – detached, mildly amused – made light of a dark situation (the middle of an arrest scenario) …

Photographed just left of centre, and framed in a perfect square, Saddler’s chunky proportions dominate this image. Rain has just fallen and the floor of the muster yard where Saddler sits is still wet. The faintly shimmering reflection of the legs of his chair can just be made out. Light flows down from above, and is also fielded up from the wet floor, suffusing the image with a diaphanous softness. The wall’s scratched, flaked, mottled quality adds to the visual interest, making the polished smoothness of Saddler all the more pronounced against the distressed patina of his setting.