Renee has sat on my desk for a while now and watches me with her 100-year-old eyes. The lenses boring into me as the book moves this way and that across my desk. Who is she? What has she seen with those eyes?
One Hundred Years is a collection of portraits harvested from a very particular part of London by photographer Jenny Lewis. It brings together one portrait from each of 100 different faces to create a peep into some of the lives that ebb and flow around the offices of a mini-press in Hackney. Hoxton Mini Press produces beautiful little books that are a welcome change from the unwieldy ‘coffee-table’ format that require clean hands, strong wrists, and plenty of bookshelf space.
Renee sits in a project about age and community; she looked deep into Jenny’s camera with an unselfconscious honesty that only age can bring. Elegant, regal even, she looks out of her picture, flanked in deep greens as her words speak from the accompanying page, hinting at her personality and revealing insight into a long, colourful life. The portrait on the cover of the book is a tighter cropped version of the photograph to be found on her page inside, which beautifully juxtaposes Renee under a portrait of Marilyn Monroe to echo the glamorous tale in her all too brief words. Have a read.
What does any portrait show us? Why do we look at pictures of people we don’t know? Page after page contains a single portrait that incrementally builds into a collective representation of a community. A true slice of all life that reveals the richness found in this London borough where lives are as diverse as the faces captured. Not hunted, nor targeted, or sampled this collection of faces is a taster of the personalities to be found in Hackney and Lewis cast her subjects during democratic ‘auditions’ by visiting community spaces and nudging conversations; key skills in the art of being a photographer. The people who have chosen to dwell and play out their lives in Hackney have generously participated in creating this tapestry of East End life that Jenny has stitched together so beautifully.
There is no complex conceptual strategy to the arrangement of this project; it’s simple and clear. The format doesn’t become repetitive in its relentless survey of faces that represent time passing on 100 faces and glimpses into 100 life stories to extend the visual inquiry deeper into each personality. This is an honest photographic investigation, a true organisation of visual data into a soulful community project. The project accessed insight into characters who belong to this community; perhaps familiar to most Londoners past and present who know something about Hackney. But, to those viewers without a knowledge of London culture it offers an insight into the generosity of the strangers who kindly respond to a photographer’s request in this age of gridlocked visual traffic.
I glance across the room where I write and watch my boys growing up in their photographs; I melt. I know them so well and I remember each moment that played around the one captured. Looking at pictures of people that we don’t know is rewarding in a different way; it offers the opportunity to learn about the unfamiliar rather than cocoon and sway in the joys of intimacy with the people we love and, in this instance, celebrate the skill of a photographer who managed her time well with a stranger.
As I think about leaving this review, I can’t help but turn the pages to find Emma age 53; I wish I knew more about her as the warmth in her few words welcomes viewers and readers into her world and leaves us wanting to know more. I’d like to know her and share tales of our parallel years as we look back to 1968 and forward into unknown years.
This book is not ready for the shelf yet; Renee can stay on my desk a while longer.
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Reviewed for Photomonitor by Helen James
One Hundred Years: Portraits of a community aged 0–100 by Jenny Lewis is published by Hoxton Mini Press
