CARITA SILANDER

London Archive Essay | A1261

8/4/2021

This image was taken standing underneath the DLR viaduct. I can’t remember what had enticed me to go there. One step leads to another — that is all I can say, I suppose. However, I do know why I took the image, as much as I cherish forgetting what I capture as a part of my practice.

Oh, the excitement when the negatives come back from the lab! Looking at the film strips, I remember where I was, see it anew, but especially, if the shot is successful, I see what I saw when I pressed the shutter; closed the blades — the eyelids of the lens, in front of the black box — thus, committed the view to the memory of the film roll.

It was the diffused light, the translucent white sky over the DLR viaduct, and the roads that cross over each other, extending into the distance like ribbons in the wind.

During the first stages of writing these texts, I wondered what in the Zeus could I write about this photograph. It is a minimalistic image whose subject matter is a road, a railway viaduct and the sky. The results of an online search of the name of the road, A1261, were motorists' websites and blogs about roads in the United Kingdom. Similarly, the information about the construction of the Docklands Light Railway, the DLR, consists of industrial vocabulary and the kind of turn of phrases that are only understandable to a civil engineer or a railway aficionado. When I typed ‘West India Dock Road’ on the search box and had a quick glance over the results, I sighed out of relief. I wouldn’t have to spin a story out of the motorways going through London.

A1261 was built on West India Dock Road in the 1980s when the area was regenerated after the closure of the London Docks. West India Dock Road in turn was built in 1802 as a part of the Commercial Road to serve as a link between the Docklands and the City. The construction of the road coincided with the opening of the first dock on the isle, West India. The building of the West India Docks was funded by plantation owners, slave traders and sugar merchants. Indeed, the development of the London Docks between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries is directly linked to the growing transatlantic slave trade in the British colonies at the time. Today, theMuseum of London Docklands is housed in one West India Docks’ former warehouses and Canary Wharf, the office building complex is known, stands on the site of one of its three docks.

Early on in my research, I had given up trying to determine what exactly had been there before the vistas in my photographs. It would have been impossible. I was therefore pleasantly surprised when I found two photographs of a pub on the London Picture Archive’s map, on the very same spot as the view in my photograph, stating that their location on the map was exact. That is how I came across one of the lost institutions of East London: Charlie Brown’s.

Charlie Brown’s was a pub that stood on 116 West India Dock Road. It was officially called The Railway Tavern but it was better known by the name of its landlord, Mr Brown. Mr Brown was, by all accounts a charismatic and well-liked man. He collected treasures, sometimes as payments for drinks from his clientele, mainly sailors and dockworkers. Some of his more prestigious objects were purchased from antique dealers. All of these objects were on display in the pub and became attractions in themselves. When Mr Brown died in 1932, his funeral was attended by over 6000 people. His daughter took the license of the Railway Tavern and ran it for several years. His son had a pub opposite to the Railway Tavern. Mr Brown’s treasures were divided between the siblings but where they ended up, is unknown.

A few areas in London have undergone such drastic changes as the Isle of Dogs. The closure of the docks and building of the ‘Second City’ in the 1980s was a massive undertaking at the time and much opposed by the locals. Numerous historians have explored this bygone part of London life. Some of their blogs are listed below and I would especially recommend ‘The Short History of West India Dock Road’ on the Isle of Dogs – Past Life, Past Lives blog.

Railway Tavern Public House, 116 West India Dock Road, photograph, 1925

Pub interior, Railway Tavern Public House, photograph, 1928

Bird's-eye view of West India Docks on the Isle of Dogs, showing Blackwall in foreground and the City Canal on the left. Aquatint, 1802

General view of West India Docks, aquatint, 1810. Images, with the exception of the author's, reproduced with the kind permission of London Picture Archive www.londonpicturearchive.org.uk

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vols43-4/pp117-119

On the docks and the slave trade https://www.culture24.org.uk/history-and-heritage/art51852

https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/museum-london-docklands/permanent-galleries/london-sugar-slavery

https://www.britannica.com/place/London-Docklands

https://islandhistory.wordpress.com/2020/11/12/the-west-india-dock-road-a-short-history/

http://stories-of-london.org/charlie-browns/

London Archive Essay | Crowley's Wharf, SE10

2/4/2021

It was 6am on a Saturday but I jumped out of bed as soon as I realised it was foggy outside.

I have been running underneath this jetty on one of my regular routes for years. Now that socialising has only been allowed outdoors and locally for a while, I have had more opportunities to admire it. This jetty might just be one of my favourite structures in Greenwich, even in London. In the sunless winter mornings and nights, it is imposing as dark waves crush onto it. In daylight, the otherwise steely grey jetty begins to reflect the changing colour palette of the day. However, to give the jetty the attention it deserves, I wanted to photograph it surrounded by fog. As well as being atmospheric, echoing the London of yesteryears, it also sets apart any given object from its surroundings.

Hence the hasty departure from the comfort of my pillow and duvet that morning.

My research into the history of this site, Crowley’s Wharf, began chaotically —or at least so it felt. I spent one afternoon clicking on the London Picture Archive map and following the leads from the photographs that came up. Another day was spent reading blogs about the area. The history of this site has a link to Quakerism, and not knowing much about it, I listened to a podcast about the movement and its founder and went on to read about its current presence in Finland and elsewhere. As it tends to happen when I am working on anything time consuming, like a dissertation or a photo project, I found several leads I would have liked to follow. Several things of interest, books, ideas, thoughts to ponder, places to visit but with the task at hand I am unable to pursue any of them. It is frustrating, consuming even but I have accepted it as part of the creative process.

My sources tell me that Crowley’s Wharf gets its name from Sir Ambrose Crowley, who had a warehouse as well as a mansion on the waterfront from 1704 until 1855. That was when Crowley’s House, as the Jacobean mansion was called, was demolished because it failed to get a buyer. The warehouse was used as a stable and a grazing area for the horses pulling the trams until 1906. Sir Ambrose Crowley manufactured nails, screws and anchors for the Navy. He was a Quaker, and as per his beliefs, his workers had benefits, such as sick pay which wasn’t the norm in those days. His workers were known as the ‘Crowley’s Boys’ because of the way they defended their rights. After Crowley’s death, the business was inherited by his son, and later on by his son’s widow. The company continued to trade in Greenwich until the 1850s.

In 1906, the Greenwich power station was built on this site to provide power for the tramways. The jetties were used for unloading the coal that was burned there as well as collecting the ash that burning the coal produced. In the 1920s, burning coal was replaced by using oil and gas. The power station is nowadays a back-up power source for the Transport for London and is still using fossil fuel. The jetty is no longer in use.

The events of Greenwich have been well-documented throughout the times. There are many drawings, engravings and paintings of the area well before the invention of photography in 1839, after which the number of visual records multiplies considerably. What do these visions from the past tell us? What can they tell us? They have all been shaped, distorted even, by the biases of their eras. At the same time, however, we have to keep in mind that we too have our biases and blind spots. Progress and enlightenment are not inevitable.

As of the photograph, those people really were there, as were their surroundings, and their likeness was drawn onto the film. A photograph is a slice of time and space, accurate enough, one might argue, to represent the fraction of a second being captured. A painting, on the other hand, cannot be produced in an instant. It most likely represents the views and ideals of both the painter and the buyer or the patron. The painter, here already implementing the laws of perspective when composing the image, paints the scene as he or she has once seen it or perhaps, bringing a few separate elements together.

When I look at some of these paintings and photographs from decades and centuries ago and see a different Greenwich, I often feel a fuzzy sense of nostalgia. I escape into history, even though it isn’t my heritage. I tell myself that there are worse vices a person can have — I suppose this is how everyone defends their defaults.

An image, a representation of the real -- what is it, really? A mere projection of ideas? A dialogue between that which is outside of the thinking being and he, she, or they -- the cogito, ergo sum? Or a clairvoyant insight, a revelation, that there is more to the world, to the real, that meets the eye?

The eye is so sensuous, easily infatuated. Gullible. And language, insufficient.

Crowley House, photograph by Sir John Gilbert, 1855. Courtesy of Greenwich Heritage Centre

Greenwich Power Station, with the jetties in use, photograph, 1906. Courtesy of the London Picture Archive

Scene at Greenwich on the River Thames, oil painting by Thomas Miles Richardson Sir, 1822-1826. Courtesy of Laing Art Gallery

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

https://greenwichindustrialhistory.blogspot.com/2015/04/greenwich-power-station.html

http://www.royalobservatorygreenwich.org/articles.php?article=1243

https://alondoninheritance.com/london-buildings/trinity-hospital-greenwich-power-station/

https://www.southlondonclub.co.uk/blog/2017/8/2/10-power-stations-of-south-london

http://www.ballastquay.com/sir-ambrose-crowley.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrose_Crowley

London Archive Essay | Canary Wharf, E14

26/3/2021

Going through the Canary Wharf on the DLR, especially in the haze of the morning hours, is an experience. The sun rising from somewhere beyond the Isle of Dogs, the colours of the dawn’s reflection on the walls of glass, ruled, like a notebook page; then going over the bridges and seeing everything reflected from the water, as if there being another dimension in there somewhere, thinking how bizarre it is that these structures are built as if on water, with new ones under construction and being completed, and the building that has been a skeleton for 12 years already. There are old ships and luxury apartments, looking so impersonal to live in but providing such a futuristic backdrop for my commute.

It was foggy that morning, and I knew what I wanted to photograph. I got off the train at West India Quay station, walked at the south end of the platforms, and found a spot with the least restricted view towards Canary Wharf station. I took a few light meter readings and composed the image. Looking through the viewfinder, however, I decided to change the shutter speed from 1/25 to 1/50 (my Rolleiflex dates before the time shutter speeds were fixed to the ones commonly in use today) because so much of the area inside the frame was permeated with almost translucent mist. The fog of the early morning was already beginning to disperse. I waited for a few trains to go past and one to leave the platform towards Lewisham. Just before the next train to Bank came in full view, I pressed the shutter.

I had seen this view when, trying to hide my excitement, I had one time gotten a front seat and at another time the very last seat on the DLR. This sight of the Canary Wharf DLR station has since been on the back of my mind. The decisive moment to take the photograph came when a day off and thick fog over London coincided.

I wonder though if it is misleading to say that I as the photographer was the creator of this image, in the sense that I would have had an original idea and would have made this photograph as an object. I took this image; I saw it; and I copied it with a camera apparatus. And yes, I could have produced a printed image, therefore an object, out of the 6x6cm- sized frame on a reversal film. Nevertheless, the sight is still out there for anyone else to photograph when the weather so permits.

When I have mentioned this before, some very kind people have come to my rescue and defended my artistry by saying, for example, that I nevertheless have gone and wandered looking for photographs and brought an image to the public to look at. I agree with this, and it is indeed what every photographer holds onto. I don’t think I am belittling photography or what I do in general when I question the premise of the Artist Photographer. I am merely pointing out that the role of an artist photographer is challenging because anything can be framed and made into an image. The real, if I may insist on its existence, must precede its representation.

I know, I know. The post-structuralist theory and the merry-go-around of the real and the representation. But my point is pragmatic.

There is, however, something (else) that can’t be replicated or represented by creating an art object: being present, even for a short while, and seeing. Looking, breathing, being quiet. In that moment, there is also painful restlessness, a piercing realisation of being next to something beautiful and harmonious but being only next to it, not part of it. I feel that pain often but haven’t, until now, wanted to put it into words and look at it. Why? Have I thought it pointless? Why am I now willing to do this, hold that pain, like one does to a stone against the light, in order to see its contours better? Or am I?

What can be said about this image, about it specifically as a photograph? Photographs are loaded with the capacity of meaning, but those interpretations have to be communicated, said, written; there have to be words. Art criticism or a critical reception of art works is a kind of interrogation of biases, meanings and readings, an arena where philosophical undercurrents are debated. To some, it is a conversation between the viewer and the image. There is an expectation that I, as the photographer, should contribute to this discussion, but I have always found this dual role stifling. I feel that I can’t occupy both of those positions simultaneously without making work that is self-conscious, literal, or only in dialogue with the art world.

As the photographer, as the operator of the camera apparatus — the magical black box with a mechanical eye and an ability record what it sees — I am by no means innocent or neutral. Is it obvious, for example, that I am a white European and a female by looking at this image? And if so, is it damning?

I keep going off a tangent in trying to read this photograph. Perhaps, having taken the image, I am too close to it to do so.

Canary Wharf DLR station was opened in 1991 when the Isle of Dogs was regenerated after the closure of the London Docks. The station is built into the base of one of the first skyscrapers on the site what used to belong to the West India Docks. The photographs below depict this site before the docks were demolished.

Entrance gates to West India Docks, photograph, date unknown

General view of West India Docks, photograph, 1977

The Endurance, in the south West India Dock, before sailing for the Antarctic on the 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Photograph, 1914. Images, except author's own, reproduced with the kind permission of London Picture Archive www.londonpicturearchive.org.uk

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

https://www.thetrams.co.uk/dlr/stations/Canary_Wharf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_Wharf_DLR_station
Pictures of the Docks http://www.urban75.org/london/docks.html
https://londonist.com/2016/06/dazzling-then-and-now-photos-show-london-s-changing-face

<<Previous

JOURNAL

London Archive Essay | A1261

London Archive Essay | Crowley's Wharf, SE10

London Archive Essay | Canary Wharf, E14

Subscribe to a mailing list

WRITINGS