Roger Mayne

(b Cambridge, 5 May 1929). English photographer. He is known principally for his images of British street life, which date from 1956 to the early 1960s. His inspired photographs of Teddy boys (a youth subculture of the late 1950s) and their girlfriends, of adults and of children playing have been widely exhibited and published. His extended study of Southam Street, North Kensington, was the result of five years of photography (1956-61) in one London street; in total, he produced around 1400 negatives. Other subjects included theatre portraiture and especially landscape, in Spain, Greece and Britain, in monochrome and in colour. His photographs for the Shell Guide to Devon were published in London in 1975, with a text by his wife Ann Jellicoe. From the mid-1960s Mayne was interested in documenting the growth of his children. He later developed an interest in drawing and etching.

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Mayne, Roger (b. 1929). Though still an active photographer, printmaker, and draughtsman, Mayne will always be linked with England in the 1950s and early 1960s—especially with the London district of Notting Dale, described by Colin MacInnes in his novel Absolute Beginners (1959). Mayne studied chemistry at Oxford and while still there published his first photographs, of a student ballet production, in Picture Post. He was quick to acquaint himself with the works of masters like Cartier-Bresson, Steinert, Strand, and Weegee and—with Hugo van Wadenoyen—exhibited international contemporary photographs in Britain through the Combined Societies. Through exhibitions, articles, and his own widely published work, Mayne injected a new urgency and ambition into British photography. In 1956 he held a one-man show at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and discovered one of his most inspiring subjects—Southam Street, London W10. He photographed the street and its lively inhabitants for five years. As well as street environments and the teenager phenomenon, Mayne photographed the Aldermaston anti-nuclear marches, northern factories, landscapes, family life, the British at play. Subsequent exhibitions and publications established him as one of Britain's modern masters.

— Mark Haworth-Booth

Bibliography

• Mayne, R., Photographs (2001)

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