Photograph by Jordan Lema (age 10), Kingsmead Eyes Project. V&A Museum of Childhood.
I wish I remembered more from being ten years old. An age where the imagination reins triumphant; where boys live in flower pots, ghosts inhabit pavements and socks are all-powerful. Where ordinary stuff has magnanimous importance and intangible things like distance and promise can be seen somehow, are concrete…
These are the thoughts I’m left with after visiting Kingsmead Eyes at the V&A Museum of Childhood. It’s free and it’s on until February. It is the result of a six m0nth collaboration between renowned world press photographer Gideon Mendel and a bunch of ten-year olds from a Hackney estate. The kids were given a camera each, shown how it works, and sent home to photograph their life over the course of six months. What’s left is startling.
Each photo has a hand written description attached and these are often poignant in their frank honesty. Everyday occurrences such as telephone calls are captured; isolated moments, immortalised and laden with unanswerable questions.
The work of Mendel runs alongside that of the pupils. His images feel more direct and less ambiguous. They present an interesting counter, rendering the work of the kids even more intimate; the child insiders verses the adult outsider.Viewed as a whole, the images invite a compelling, almost voyeuristic, journey through a beautiful and diverse community. Individually, they provide alternative, often intuitive, insights into inner city London life.
