I’ve been really enjoying John Londei’s book, and it’s giving me more thoughts about my own project.
Firstly, it’s interesting to note how many of the shots are not simply ‘posed’ but painstakingly set up, with stock displayed on the shop counters in elaborate arrays. Not all of them, but many. I’d assumed that I’d want to just capture the shops exactly as they are.
Secondly, the write-up for each shop is really quite detailed. He’s clearly asked the shopkeepers for whatever history they have – when they started trading, how long it’s been in family, how long they expect to still be there and all sorts of lovely details. And often (I’ve not read it all yet) they’re quite sad stories of shops knowingly in decline, not expected to stay in business beyond the current shopkeeper’s demise, with no-one else left to take the business on after – in some cases – several generations. And that’s even more noticeable when you read the very short summaries on his revisit in 2004. To read that the old proprietors died is no real surprise, but still a bit thought-provoking. Possibly worse is the number of times his research hits a dead end and he simply says, for example, “no-one known what became of Mrs Long or her family”.
One of the other projects I looked at earlier simply asked each shopkeeper “what do you love about your shop?”. If I’m going to turn this into a social history I’ll need a little more than that. So my wife has suggested (she’s good, my wife) getting in touch with someone from the museum to see if there might be a local historian who could work on this project with me. They could be talking to the shopkeepers while I set up the lighting and so on, and we could collaborate so that I do the photographs and they do the words. It’s a possibility.
The Comfort Zone 