Looking at the pedestrians in East London, a colourful part of the capital, in the book The Corners of Chris Dorley-Brown, a sudden feeling of magic creeps in the mind of the beholder. They all seem neatly arranged over the photographic canvas as if the photographer got a divine stroke of multi-decisive moments in his viewfinder. The wide variety of styles of the East London buildings adds to the almost forgone, nostalgic atmosphere, and the absence of cars puzzles even more. “I created a world that was quieter, stiller and calmer. The process was more like painting”, explains the London photographer.  

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Chris Dorley-Brown talks about the origin of his third book, The Corners, which organically arose from another project. “I was researching material for my book The Longest Way Round, a book about the Second World War and my parents’ experience and the photographs that they left me when they died. I sampled a narrative from this collection of photos that they left me, and in the process of doing that, I started making some pictures of the places where my family had lived in London, just simply for research purposes. It ended up being an examination about London. I tried to remove all the cars to have a clear picture of the buildings, just by waiting for the cars to pass by. I stitched the images together to get a clean image. I noticed in that process something interesting was happening to the image. I could make a very high-quality picture from the stitch, just like a 4x5 plate camera which I used to work with.”

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Constructing the image

Each shot of the image was shot in a different moment. And when Dorley-Brown put it all together, something magical happened to the light and to the way the people in the picture were relating to each other. It broke up the standard visual narrative of a single photo. “If I wanted to have someone with a red coat at a certain spot, I would wait for a person with a red coat. I started a process that was similar to painting. I realized that I could construct the image. I noticed the image got an interesting quality to it. Like you have asked them to be there like I have paid models. In this way, I started this project using this technique.”
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Why did Chris choose street corners instead of just the street themselves? “It was always an interesting intersection of two streets. I started researching locations where the buildings had an interesting history or colour. Even though it had a similar subject matter of what I did before, it introduced a new element. I searched for locations in East London which had a history that told me something of where my family used to live and where I live now.”

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Film-like colours
At the time Chris Dorley-Brown was doing this project, he looked at the photos of David Granick, who took a lot of Kodachrome photos of East London published in his book The East end in colour 1960-1980. “The pallet of Kodachrome in that environment was particularly interesting to me. I found I could simulate that pallet digitally quite easily. I became freshly interested in my surrounding. I make pictures for people that haven’t been born yet because pictures become more interesting when time passes by. I intended to create colours that were film-like, as if shot analogue. I took most pictures in the morning when the light is still soft. I just made one picture a day because each picture takes one and a half hour to shoot and about a week to construct.”
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I intended to create colours that were film-like, as if shot analogue.

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No cars

To leave out the cars was an aesthetic choice. “For me, the cars are from a different time. They somehow work against the buildings, against the colours. They dominate. I just waited for them to drive past before I took the pictures. I created a world that was quieter and stiller, and calmer. The process was more like painting.

When you put the single shots together into one big image, the computer makes its own decision. That is why I say the pictures are partly made by me and partly made by artificial intelligence. The blending process in Photoshop takes a long time, and you can see it making decisions. I never go back to film anymore; this process is too seductive.

I had to straighten the vertical lines manually. I am used to taking care of that because I used to be an architectural photographer. I used a Sinar 4x5 inch. The prints that I made for exhibitions are about 40 x 50 inches (100 x 125 cm).

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I created a world that was quieter and stiller, and calmer.

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Decisive moment

The photographer chooses many moments and constructed a sort of long stretched moment. Is the construction of the total image out of many shots a reaction against the decisive moment? “Yes, this is very much a reaction to the single decisive moment of Cartier-Bresson and his 1/60 of a second. I tell you a story. Some years ago, an editor saw my photos and wanted to publish them. But when he heard how I made them, he got furious because it was not ‘real’ photography in his opinion.”  

Does the book The Corners, showing us pedestrians in car-less streets, contain a hidden moral message? “I didn’t have a moral message promoting the old times of tranquillity. I just wanted to make an interesting picture. I had no desire to go back in time. I was just enjoying the medium of photography. It comes naturally. I work in a semi-unconscious state, and I do not think too much about what I am doing; I am just responding to my mood and what is in front of me.”

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I am just responding to my mood and what is in front of me

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Inspiration

The sunny and neat way East London is depicted in The Corners seems like a rehabilitation of the problematic reputation of the area. Chris Dorley-Brown is quickly to refute common prejudices. “The people in East London are not from other countries; they are all born in England. The ancestors came on the ship, and they got off the boat in East London, and they stayed there. My own family came from Ireland in a similar way. You can’t make a picture of East London without including the incredible diversity of people.” Taking this background into consideration, it is not surprising that the photographer of the British working-class Chris Killip was one of Chris’ inspiration. “Paul Graham and Eugene Atget have also inspired me, and the Düsseldorfer Schule, the Bechers, Stephen Shore and before them Diane Arbus and Bill Brandt.”

Chris set up his photographic practice in 1984, concentrating on documenting East London. In a series of residencies and commissions focussing on social housing, workplaces, hospitals and architecture, he has established a substantial archive of re-purposed images and re-contextualized for distribution via web, film, exhibition and publication. A new book will be released in the autumn of 2021.

https://modrex.com @chrisdorleybrown