1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:05,240 This programme contains some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting. 2 00:00:05,240 --> 00:00:08,120 # Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag and smile, smile, smile 3 00:00:08,120 --> 00:00:10,960 # While you've a Lucifer to light your fag... # 4 00:00:10,960 --> 00:00:13,840 ECHOES OF SHELL FIRE 5 00:00:13,840 --> 00:00:16,240 # Smile, boys, that's the style. # 6 00:00:17,880 --> 00:00:22,640 There are some places where you really do keep company with ghosts. 7 00:00:24,640 --> 00:00:27,800 You can hear their cries and their laments. 8 00:00:38,160 --> 00:00:41,600 Each one of these lights means a hospital bed. 9 00:00:41,600 --> 00:00:44,320 In each bed lies a man. 10 00:00:45,400 --> 00:00:49,640 And every man in those beds has half their face missing. 11 00:00:51,040 --> 00:00:55,680 In 1916, in July, they thought there would be 200 patients 12 00:00:55,680 --> 00:00:58,120 who needed facial reconstruction 13 00:00:58,120 --> 00:01:01,720 after receiving terrible wounds in the Battle of the Somme. 14 00:01:03,520 --> 00:01:07,040 In the event, 2,000 were brought in 15 00:01:07,040 --> 00:01:10,200 to wards that were specially made to receive them, 16 00:01:10,200 --> 00:01:13,960 in this military hospital at Aldershot. 17 00:01:15,280 --> 00:01:19,880 These were, one tabloid newspaper said, the loneliest tommies, 18 00:01:19,880 --> 00:01:24,760 because no-one could or would look at them. 19 00:01:27,800 --> 00:01:30,360 Mirrors were banned from these wards, 20 00:01:30,360 --> 00:01:34,640 lest these poor people looked at their own distorted reflection - 21 00:01:34,640 --> 00:01:39,560 the reflection, as somebody once said, of broken gargoyles. 22 00:01:44,600 --> 00:01:48,200 But there was someone who looked these poor men in the eye. 23 00:01:49,560 --> 00:01:52,040 The artist, Henry Tonks. 24 00:01:54,240 --> 00:01:57,360 Tonks' job was to make images of the wounds, 25 00:01:57,360 --> 00:02:02,440 but at the same time, he captured the humanity behind the mutilation. 26 00:02:08,560 --> 00:02:11,120 They are some of the most astounding images 27 00:02:11,120 --> 00:02:13,440 in all of British portraiture. 28 00:02:15,920 --> 00:02:17,440 If you think about portraits, 29 00:02:17,440 --> 00:02:22,160 they are of course, essentially, very often beautiful lies. 30 00:02:22,160 --> 00:02:25,480 Whatever these are, they are not beautiful lies - 31 00:02:25,480 --> 00:02:27,000 they are the truth. 32 00:02:28,520 --> 00:02:31,360 Tonks' drawings challenge everything 33 00:02:31,360 --> 00:02:33,240 we think a portrait should be. 34 00:02:36,520 --> 00:02:40,000 Most of the portraits ever painted have been of the great and the good, 35 00:02:40,000 --> 00:02:43,120 who've paid handsomely to look their best. 36 00:02:44,120 --> 00:02:46,320 But there's always been a rogue strain - 37 00:02:46,320 --> 00:02:51,160 a glorious strain in British art that tells it like it is - 38 00:02:51,160 --> 00:02:55,760 according to which, all humanity is fit for portrayal. 39 00:02:55,760 --> 00:02:58,920 Artists who've plunged into the crowd 40 00:02:58,920 --> 00:03:02,160 and given us the true face of the people. 41 00:03:21,880 --> 00:03:24,960 When I was growing up in London in the 1950s, 42 00:03:24,960 --> 00:03:29,680 the words "Notting Hill" did not mean flat whites and designer jeans. 43 00:03:29,680 --> 00:03:31,320 They meant race riots. 44 00:03:35,840 --> 00:03:40,800 These streets were centre stage in a battle over the nation's identity, 45 00:03:40,800 --> 00:03:44,360 triggered by the arrival of thousands of new faces 46 00:03:44,360 --> 00:03:46,760 in towns and cities across Britain. 47 00:03:50,120 --> 00:03:52,360 Among them was Charlie Phillips, 48 00:03:52,360 --> 00:03:55,440 who came to London from Jamaica in 1956. 49 00:03:56,560 --> 00:03:59,840 As a 12-year-old boy, armed with a camera, 50 00:03:59,840 --> 00:04:04,000 he became the accidental chronicler of his embattled community. 51 00:04:05,880 --> 00:04:08,080 This area was a ghetto. 52 00:04:08,080 --> 00:04:11,600 Certain parts of it was a no-go area. 53 00:04:13,040 --> 00:04:16,280 You'd have wire mesh covering your windows, because you don't know when 54 00:04:16,280 --> 00:04:20,320 you're going to get firebombed or a brick through your windows, yeah? 55 00:04:20,320 --> 00:04:23,760 "No dogs, no blacks, no Irish" - that was the era we were living in. 56 00:04:25,960 --> 00:04:29,760 Like so many, Charlie suffered not just poisonous hostility, 57 00:04:29,760 --> 00:04:31,800 but grim living conditions. 58 00:04:34,320 --> 00:04:38,520 This was an era when the average family would live in a double room, 59 00:04:38,520 --> 00:04:42,040 a family of two would live in a single room, yeah? 60 00:04:42,040 --> 00:04:45,520 This was an era when the communal kitchen would be on the landing. 61 00:04:45,520 --> 00:04:49,360 We all had paraffin heaters with a kettle on top. 62 00:04:49,360 --> 00:04:54,360 This was the way our average immigrant would live. 63 00:04:54,360 --> 00:04:55,760 You didn't pay your rent, 64 00:04:55,760 --> 00:04:58,640 you'd find your things out on the street next morning, yeah? 65 00:04:58,640 --> 00:05:01,120 Hostility bred closeness. 66 00:05:01,120 --> 00:05:03,880 An 8pm curfew meant that after days spent 67 00:05:03,880 --> 00:05:05,840 snapping the world on his doorstep, 68 00:05:05,840 --> 00:05:09,200 Charlie's nights were spent developing his photographs 69 00:05:09,200 --> 00:05:11,360 in the family bathtub. 70 00:05:11,360 --> 00:05:13,840 He had no idea that what he was actually doing 71 00:05:13,840 --> 00:05:15,360 was documenting history. 72 00:05:16,400 --> 00:05:20,760 The type of people I was photographing was ordinary people. 73 00:05:20,760 --> 00:05:22,600 I wasn't commissioned. 74 00:05:22,600 --> 00:05:25,560 None of these photographs was I ever commissioned to take, 75 00:05:25,560 --> 00:05:27,520 so I took it in my own time 76 00:05:27,520 --> 00:05:29,720 and some of the people within this photograph, 77 00:05:29,720 --> 00:05:32,320 I have a personal relationship with them, 78 00:05:32,320 --> 00:05:35,160 because I was part of this community. 79 00:05:38,600 --> 00:05:40,440 With an insider's street knowledge, 80 00:05:40,440 --> 00:05:43,680 Charlie made portraits that are strikingly intimate. 81 00:05:52,000 --> 00:05:53,520 The wonderful thing about this 82 00:05:53,520 --> 00:05:55,880 is this kind of play between these two figures. 83 00:05:55,880 --> 00:05:57,680 She's looking pensive, 84 00:05:57,680 --> 00:06:02,200 and he's at this perfect film moment of lighting a cigarette, 85 00:06:02,200 --> 00:06:05,000 so there's this absolutely wonderful drama between them. 86 00:06:05,000 --> 00:06:07,040 So you, Charlie, are standing there - 87 00:06:07,040 --> 00:06:10,280 are you looking at them and waiting for a moment like that? 88 00:06:10,280 --> 00:06:12,800 I never set anything up, Simon. 89 00:06:12,800 --> 00:06:17,240 When I shoot, I imagine myself as being a hunter 90 00:06:17,240 --> 00:06:19,720 and the subjects being the prey, 91 00:06:19,720 --> 00:06:22,440 so I shoot and ask questions after. 92 00:06:27,640 --> 00:06:31,360 I always want to see truth, you know? 93 00:06:31,360 --> 00:06:34,760 I always want to see truth in a picture. 94 00:06:34,760 --> 00:06:37,600 It's a moment where you can treasure that moment 95 00:06:37,600 --> 00:06:42,080 and you look back in 50 years and you can still see the beauty, 96 00:06:42,080 --> 00:06:44,360 and this is when it becomes honest. 97 00:06:48,200 --> 00:06:49,680 When he took these photographs, 98 00:06:49,680 --> 00:06:53,200 Charlie revealed the real world behind the headlines - 99 00:06:53,200 --> 00:06:55,240 the individuals in the crowd, 100 00:06:55,240 --> 00:06:58,280 the faces that might otherwise have been forgotten. 101 00:07:01,360 --> 00:07:06,280 Our history and our culture has only been passed down verbally 102 00:07:06,280 --> 00:07:08,640 and when I take my photographs out, 103 00:07:08,640 --> 00:07:11,960 it brings back memories to a lot of people, 104 00:07:11,960 --> 00:07:13,640 especially the fifth generation, 105 00:07:13,640 --> 00:07:15,920 who doesn't know who their great-granddad was, 106 00:07:15,920 --> 00:07:18,800 or who their grandad was, or who their uncle was, you know? 107 00:07:18,800 --> 00:07:21,800 So that becomes the emotional part of it, as well. 108 00:07:21,800 --> 00:07:26,120 People actually come to my exhibition and started crying, and people. 109 00:07:30,480 --> 00:07:34,240 You can see the emotion that's involved. 110 00:07:34,240 --> 00:07:36,880 - 50 years of work, Simon. - Yeah. I do. 111 00:07:41,320 --> 00:07:43,720 Well, what I love about these photos in particular 112 00:07:43,720 --> 00:07:46,640 is that they are not editorials. 113 00:07:46,640 --> 00:07:49,120 They don't actually preach at you, 114 00:07:49,120 --> 00:07:52,280 they're just happenstance, really - they're a kind of slice of life 115 00:07:52,280 --> 00:07:54,560 in which nothing is particularly forced, 116 00:07:54,560 --> 00:07:58,280 and nothing is sanctimoniously optimistic. 117 00:07:58,280 --> 00:07:59,800 There's a black fellow here, 118 00:07:59,800 --> 00:08:02,680 plonking a kiss on an old dear in a pub, 119 00:08:02,680 --> 00:08:06,880 this particular pub, and it's just one of those golden moments. 120 00:08:08,200 --> 00:08:11,440 There's a lovely picture of some schoolboys, actually, 121 00:08:11,440 --> 00:08:13,040 who are laughing and giggling, 122 00:08:13,040 --> 00:08:15,400 because that's what nine-year-olds do 123 00:08:15,400 --> 00:08:17,240 when a camera is pointed at them. 124 00:08:17,240 --> 00:08:19,240 And they haven't been set up like that. 125 00:08:19,240 --> 00:08:21,680 Even the one which is destined to become - 126 00:08:21,680 --> 00:08:23,640 not a word I like - an icon, 127 00:08:23,640 --> 00:08:29,240 has that quality of nothing actually set in stone, 128 00:08:29,240 --> 00:08:31,520 either for the worse, or for the better. 129 00:08:31,520 --> 00:08:35,600 Here's a lovely picture of love, of a beautiful white girl 130 00:08:35,600 --> 00:08:38,320 and an incredibly handsome black man together, 131 00:08:38,320 --> 00:08:43,680 and they have both resolution and uncertainty written in their faces. 132 00:08:45,680 --> 00:08:50,440 Charlie's photographs embody the drama of everyday life. 133 00:08:50,440 --> 00:08:54,000 Each of these faces has its own story to tell. 134 00:08:55,480 --> 00:08:58,600 And it's our fascination with each other's stories 135 00:08:58,600 --> 00:09:02,440 that gives this kind of portraiture its rich intrigue. 136 00:09:10,920 --> 00:09:15,800 This creative nosiness began centuries earlier. 137 00:09:15,800 --> 00:09:17,200 In the 18th century, 138 00:09:17,200 --> 00:09:20,960 no-one went after street stories like William Hogarth. 139 00:09:27,680 --> 00:09:30,320 On 5th March, 1733, 140 00:09:30,320 --> 00:09:35,200 Hogarth brought his brushes to Newgate Prison in London. 141 00:09:35,200 --> 00:09:38,920 Waiting for him in her cell, her cheeks freshly rouged, 142 00:09:38,920 --> 00:09:41,880 was a 22-year-old murderess, 143 00:09:41,880 --> 00:09:43,760 Sarah Malcolm, 144 00:09:43,760 --> 00:09:46,160 whose execution was just two days away. 145 00:09:47,480 --> 00:09:51,880 Hardly one of the usual suspects to be immortalised in paint. 146 00:09:53,240 --> 00:09:57,160 Sarah Malcolm is an incredible sensation, all over London. 147 00:09:57,160 --> 00:10:00,920 She's been accused of an incredibly gory crime. 148 00:10:00,920 --> 00:10:04,520 Her employer, an 80-year-old lady called Lydia Duncomb, 149 00:10:04,520 --> 00:10:07,760 and her 60-year-old companion and the ladies' maid 150 00:10:07,760 --> 00:10:11,400 have all been killed during a botched robbery. 151 00:10:15,920 --> 00:10:17,800 The old ladies had been strangled 152 00:10:17,800 --> 00:10:21,400 and the ladies' maid had had her throat cut from ear to ear. 153 00:10:21,400 --> 00:10:25,080 This was just the stuff that the equivalent of the tabloids 154 00:10:25,080 --> 00:10:27,520 really like to feed on. 155 00:10:29,080 --> 00:10:33,120 And Hogarth - the supreme sensation sniffer in art - 156 00:10:33,120 --> 00:10:37,760 recognises there's a killing to be made from a portrait of a killer. 157 00:10:39,720 --> 00:10:42,680 Hogarth grows up on the streets. 158 00:10:42,680 --> 00:10:46,880 His own father had been in prison for four years, 159 00:10:46,880 --> 00:10:50,520 so he understands the underworld of London. 160 00:10:50,520 --> 00:10:55,280 He knows the world of dirt and violence and robbery and mayhem 161 00:10:55,280 --> 00:10:58,040 and he knows how he can turn it into art, 162 00:10:58,040 --> 00:11:01,400 he can turn it into a market, he can turn it into 163 00:11:01,400 --> 00:11:05,920 the kind of new portrait that will set London buzzing. 164 00:11:15,200 --> 00:11:17,560 The vision of the convicted murderess, 165 00:11:17,560 --> 00:11:21,400 who was nonetheless adamant to the end that she was innocent, 166 00:11:21,400 --> 00:11:25,120 produced one of Hogarth's most compelling portraits. 167 00:11:30,920 --> 00:11:35,000 The signs of the painter's skill and his imagination are all over this, 168 00:11:35,000 --> 00:11:40,560 especially in these flashing passages of very, very freely-painted white 169 00:11:40,560 --> 00:11:43,760 that describe the bonnet and the little collar 170 00:11:43,760 --> 00:11:46,080 and her rolled up sleeves, 171 00:11:46,080 --> 00:11:47,960 and the other tiny little details - 172 00:11:47,960 --> 00:11:51,680 the minute lick of hair that comes out from under the bonnet. 173 00:11:53,120 --> 00:11:54,840 And at the same time, 174 00:11:54,840 --> 00:11:57,800 he's really making us interested in her character. 175 00:11:59,800 --> 00:12:03,480 You have an incredible sense of her ferocious, 176 00:12:03,480 --> 00:12:06,320 slightly animal, dangerous presence. 177 00:12:06,320 --> 00:12:09,920 That body language, those meaty arms together. 178 00:12:11,440 --> 00:12:15,480 And the wonderful expression, staring somewhat into the distance - 179 00:12:15,480 --> 00:12:19,400 is it with defiance, or with the sense, possibly, 180 00:12:19,400 --> 00:12:22,000 just of a shade of remorse? We'll never know. 181 00:12:23,480 --> 00:12:25,120 So, it's a complicated picture - 182 00:12:25,120 --> 00:12:28,800 all that's going on inside this frame, and behind it, 183 00:12:28,800 --> 00:12:31,360 Hogarth has a wonderful instinct, 184 00:12:31,360 --> 00:12:34,320 because he knows that although nobody usually does it, 185 00:12:34,320 --> 00:12:39,760 out there, the public has as much appetite for a really great villain, 186 00:12:39,760 --> 00:12:42,400 perhaps especially a woman villain, 187 00:12:42,400 --> 00:12:46,120 as it does for yet another pompous military hero. 188 00:12:49,240 --> 00:12:52,360 Within days of Sarah Malcolm's execution, 189 00:12:52,360 --> 00:12:57,320 Hogarth transformed his oil sketch into an engraving, 190 00:12:57,320 --> 00:13:00,240 selling the prints at just sixpence a pop. 191 00:13:01,600 --> 00:13:04,280 And they sold like the hottest of cakes, 192 00:13:04,280 --> 00:13:06,080 devoured by an eager public 193 00:13:06,080 --> 00:13:09,960 curious to put a face to the name of the infamous murderess. 194 00:13:13,640 --> 00:13:15,120 With prints like this, 195 00:13:15,120 --> 00:13:21,120 Hogarth remade art as something both about and for the people. 196 00:13:22,600 --> 00:13:25,120 But he didn't do it out of principle, or sentiment - 197 00:13:25,120 --> 00:13:26,800 he did it for what counted 198 00:13:26,800 --> 00:13:31,240 on the streets of eat-or-be-eaten 18th-century London - 199 00:13:31,240 --> 00:13:32,600 the money. 200 00:13:36,640 --> 00:13:39,280 His house in Chiswick is filled with the images 201 00:13:39,280 --> 00:13:41,720 that earned him his fortune - 202 00:13:41,720 --> 00:13:44,440 a bustling cast of scruffs and scumbags 203 00:13:44,440 --> 00:13:46,840 he's invited in off the streets. 204 00:13:49,000 --> 00:13:54,720 Painting and art isn't related to the street for a long, long time. 205 00:13:54,720 --> 00:13:57,920 Art in Britain was about pleasing the King 206 00:13:57,920 --> 00:14:00,480 and the court and the aristocracy. 207 00:14:00,480 --> 00:14:03,600 There was no grungy theatre of seeing art, 208 00:14:03,600 --> 00:14:06,720 until along comes Hogarth. 209 00:14:13,320 --> 00:14:14,920 Hogarth thinks, 210 00:14:14,920 --> 00:14:19,920 because he's come from this crummy world of urban noise, 211 00:14:19,920 --> 00:14:25,560 you can make great art out of every conceivable kind of human type - 212 00:14:25,560 --> 00:14:28,720 the mad, the eccentric, the filthy, the grotesque, 213 00:14:28,720 --> 00:14:33,240 the stuttering, the muttering, the comic, the depraved. 214 00:14:33,240 --> 00:14:39,640 So many of his prints are scenes of massive uproar. 215 00:14:39,640 --> 00:14:43,120 He likes the circus, not the church. 216 00:14:43,120 --> 00:14:45,840 He likes the street, not the palace. 217 00:14:45,840 --> 00:14:47,920 That's what turns him on. 218 00:14:47,920 --> 00:14:52,040 He wants noise. He does not want peace, quiet 219 00:14:52,040 --> 00:14:55,080 and aristocratic definitions of beauty. 220 00:14:55,080 --> 00:15:00,880 Everything you can possibly imagine is all happening, all at once. 221 00:15:00,880 --> 00:15:06,720 This is Hogarth, the great animator of the human comedy, 222 00:15:06,720 --> 00:15:11,000 and it's a glorious and brand-new thing. 223 00:15:17,000 --> 00:15:21,080 By taking art off the walls of the lordly saloon 224 00:15:21,080 --> 00:15:23,400 and onto the coffee house table, 225 00:15:23,400 --> 00:15:27,880 Hogarth blazed a trail for a whole new tribe of artists. 226 00:15:27,880 --> 00:15:31,560 His prints made it possible to make a living not just by 227 00:15:31,560 --> 00:15:33,880 feeding the vanity of the mighty, 228 00:15:33,880 --> 00:15:36,600 but by satisfying the public appetite 229 00:15:36,600 --> 00:15:39,680 for the sensational stories of the streets. 230 00:15:47,400 --> 00:15:52,080 Nowhere was better for an aspiring artist to hunt down inspiration 231 00:15:52,080 --> 00:15:54,960 than the streets of late 18th-century Edinburgh, 232 00:15:56,400 --> 00:16:00,960 the only British city to rival London for its social richness. 233 00:16:06,880 --> 00:16:09,600 Here, much of the population was crowded into 234 00:16:09,600 --> 00:16:12,600 a higgledy-piggledy assembly of ancient streets - 235 00:16:12,600 --> 00:16:15,000 rich and poor living on top of each other 236 00:16:15,000 --> 00:16:17,040 in towering tenements. 237 00:16:20,760 --> 00:16:24,840 Among them was a young barber called John Kay, 238 00:16:24,840 --> 00:16:26,560 who, when business was slow, 239 00:16:26,560 --> 00:16:29,680 made sketches of the world passing by his window. 240 00:16:34,280 --> 00:16:37,000 Kay was as sharp with his etching needle 241 00:16:37,000 --> 00:16:39,520 as he was with his razor and scissors. 242 00:16:45,880 --> 00:16:48,680 He becomes a fantastic virtuoso 243 00:16:48,680 --> 00:16:52,280 at conveying the likeness, the look, 244 00:16:52,280 --> 00:16:57,080 the face of some of the most richly coloured figures in Edinburgh. 245 00:16:57,080 --> 00:16:59,600 And one of the people who comes into his shop 246 00:16:59,600 --> 00:17:02,960 is so taken with Kay and all of his aspects 247 00:17:02,960 --> 00:17:06,360 that he gives him the wherewithal to actually do it - 248 00:17:06,360 --> 00:17:10,040 to give up the snip-snip and start being 249 00:17:10,040 --> 00:17:14,280 the great portraitist of late 18th-century Edinburgh. 250 00:17:21,240 --> 00:17:23,400 Kay's wife said of him, 251 00:17:23,400 --> 00:17:28,000 "He cared for no employment except that of etching likenesses," 252 00:17:28,000 --> 00:17:32,280 and this is what he did, compulsively, obsessively. 253 00:17:33,440 --> 00:17:39,120 From 1784-1822, he created some 900 etchings, 254 00:17:39,120 --> 00:17:40,920 immortalising for all to see 255 00:17:40,920 --> 00:17:45,360 the immense parade of types who made up his great city. 256 00:17:47,560 --> 00:17:49,520 The educated and the ignorant, 257 00:17:50,680 --> 00:17:54,000 the new-fangled and the obstinately old-fashioned, 258 00:17:55,040 --> 00:17:57,240 the lordly and the lunatic. 259 00:17:59,960 --> 00:18:02,560 Here are some of my favourite Kay characters - 260 00:18:02,560 --> 00:18:04,120 and how could they not be? 261 00:18:04,120 --> 00:18:06,960 This one is really scary! 262 00:18:06,960 --> 00:18:10,040 You have to love her, she's called Margaret Suttie 263 00:18:10,040 --> 00:18:12,240 and she's a salt vendor. 264 00:18:12,240 --> 00:18:14,200 She walks the streets of Edinburgh 265 00:18:14,200 --> 00:18:16,800 with this big pack of salt on her back. 266 00:18:16,800 --> 00:18:18,400 So, she's a pretty old-ish lady, 267 00:18:18,400 --> 00:18:20,640 but she must have been tough as nails, 268 00:18:20,640 --> 00:18:23,080 cos of the heavy load she's carrying. 269 00:18:23,080 --> 00:18:26,480 Now, the thing about Margaret Suttie is that her mother was a witch - 270 00:18:26,480 --> 00:18:28,520 uh-oh - and some people said, 271 00:18:28,520 --> 00:18:30,520 "Uh-oh, like mother, like daughter." 272 00:18:30,520 --> 00:18:33,360 And what Kay has done, which is so fantastic, 273 00:18:33,360 --> 00:18:36,520 he's got a classic witch's face in profile - 274 00:18:36,520 --> 00:18:40,200 that strong nose, the sort of eyebrows from Hell. 275 00:18:40,200 --> 00:18:43,000 And actually, Kay has done this wonderful crosshatching. 276 00:18:43,000 --> 00:18:46,640 He's made everything dark and heavy and alarming. 277 00:18:46,640 --> 00:18:49,080 And here is Andrew Donaldson, with the beard. 278 00:18:49,080 --> 00:18:51,760 And it's a completely different kind of print, 279 00:18:51,760 --> 00:18:55,320 full-on, these wonderful eyes, this immense, flowing beard. 280 00:18:55,320 --> 00:18:58,960 He's actually a learned scholar of Hebrew and Greek. 281 00:18:58,960 --> 00:19:01,960 He walks around carrying a psalm book, which he recites out loud, 282 00:19:01,960 --> 00:19:04,080 of course, what you do in Edinburgh - 283 00:19:04,080 --> 00:19:05,800 straight from the Hebrew. 284 00:19:05,800 --> 00:19:07,840 And Donaldson will not shave, 285 00:19:07,840 --> 00:19:11,040 because he said, "God's creation being perfect, 286 00:19:11,040 --> 00:19:14,120 "it would be sinful to amend it in any way". 287 00:19:14,120 --> 00:19:16,160 So, no shaving for the rest of his life. 288 00:19:16,160 --> 00:19:18,960 He has a beard as long as the Royal Mile. 289 00:19:18,960 --> 00:19:21,280 It's a very sweet and endearing portrait. 290 00:19:21,280 --> 00:19:23,320 And here's why I feel a real emotional 291 00:19:23,320 --> 00:19:25,520 and psychological connection with John Kay, 292 00:19:25,520 --> 00:19:28,200 because he understood instinctively, 293 00:19:28,200 --> 00:19:30,640 in a very intellectual city like Edinburgh, 294 00:19:30,640 --> 00:19:33,920 something that all historians have to know - and that's that history 295 00:19:33,920 --> 00:19:37,640 isn't just made up of self-important, swaggering people 296 00:19:37,640 --> 00:19:41,880 making grandiose public utterances in big, public spaces. 297 00:19:41,880 --> 00:19:46,600 It's also made up of the Margaret Sutties and the Andrew Donaldsons - 298 00:19:46,600 --> 00:19:51,080 an infinity of wonderful characters, without whom 299 00:19:51,080 --> 00:19:56,200 history loses all its richness, all its human variety, all its reality, 300 00:19:56,200 --> 00:19:59,440 and we would not know about any of these people, 301 00:19:59,440 --> 00:20:04,040 were it not for the quizzical eye and large heart of John Kay. 302 00:20:06,600 --> 00:20:09,800 Kay made a roaring trade from a small print shop 303 00:20:09,800 --> 00:20:12,080 he opened on Parliament Square - 304 00:20:12,080 --> 00:20:15,440 his window packed full of his droll characters. 305 00:20:17,520 --> 00:20:21,600 But while many were delighted to see themselves immortalised in print, 306 00:20:21,600 --> 00:20:23,560 others were less so. 307 00:20:25,320 --> 00:20:28,760 There's always someone without a sense of humour, isn't there? 308 00:20:28,760 --> 00:20:32,360 And one of them we know a bit about is a very large gentlemen, 309 00:20:32,360 --> 00:20:36,440 both in the sense of his dignity and the sense of his physical size. 310 00:20:36,440 --> 00:20:38,920 He's called Mr Hamilton Bell. 311 00:20:40,560 --> 00:20:43,720 Well, even such worthy figures of Edinburgh society 312 00:20:43,720 --> 00:20:45,560 like a wee dram now and again, 313 00:20:45,560 --> 00:20:48,280 and when he is obviously totally smashed, 314 00:20:48,280 --> 00:20:51,680 he decides one night that he'll take a bet and the bet is 315 00:20:51,680 --> 00:20:55,880 that he can walk from Edinburgh to Musselburgh, seven miles, 316 00:20:55,880 --> 00:20:57,800 with somebody on his back 317 00:20:57,800 --> 00:21:00,880 and the person on his back is the bar boy. 318 00:21:00,880 --> 00:21:03,160 And there he is, in the print, 319 00:21:03,160 --> 00:21:06,720 perched on the back of this enormous man. 320 00:21:06,720 --> 00:21:09,040 Not only will he do this, but he will actually 321 00:21:09,040 --> 00:21:11,800 have a race with someone else walking to Musselburgh, 322 00:21:11,800 --> 00:21:13,600 who has nobody on his back at all. 323 00:21:13,600 --> 00:21:17,800 So, the race goes ahead and Hamilton Bell wins. 324 00:21:17,800 --> 00:21:20,280 Now, you would think, if you were Hamilton Bell, 325 00:21:20,280 --> 00:21:23,360 you'd be very happy for John Kay to immortalise you 326 00:21:23,360 --> 00:21:28,240 in this fantastic feat of heroic sportsmanship - 327 00:21:28,240 --> 00:21:30,200 but no, he's a sore winner! 328 00:21:31,520 --> 00:21:35,920 He actually takes John Kay to court, for the sheer indignity of it! 329 00:21:35,920 --> 00:21:38,320 So, Kay has a wonderful comeback. 330 00:21:38,320 --> 00:21:40,880 He makes another print of the court case, 331 00:21:40,880 --> 00:21:44,160 which, not surprisingly, John Kay wins. 332 00:21:44,160 --> 00:21:49,040 And here's Hamilton Bell - furious, goggle-eyed, 333 00:21:49,040 --> 00:21:53,080 with absolutely apoplectic rage at the way the case has come out. 334 00:21:56,200 --> 00:22:01,280 Hamilton Bell was not the only member of well-to-do Edinburgh society 335 00:22:01,280 --> 00:22:04,200 who objected to having their likenesses served up 336 00:22:04,200 --> 00:22:06,400 for the entertainment of the public. 337 00:22:07,760 --> 00:22:10,520 On at least one occasion, Kay was beaten up. 338 00:22:10,520 --> 00:22:14,360 More often, his prints were the victims of physical assault, 339 00:22:14,360 --> 00:22:16,400 destroyed by unhappy subjects 340 00:22:16,400 --> 00:22:21,080 desperate to avoid the humiliation of being exhibited in his window. 341 00:22:25,920 --> 00:22:28,360 But Pandora's box had been opened. 342 00:22:31,040 --> 00:22:33,760 The public appetite for portraiture of the people 343 00:22:33,760 --> 00:22:35,280 was stronger than ever. 344 00:22:41,440 --> 00:22:42,800 The entertainment to be had 345 00:22:42,800 --> 00:22:45,560 from looking at the faces of ordinary men and women 346 00:22:45,560 --> 00:22:48,760 had given rise to a whole new market - 347 00:22:48,760 --> 00:22:52,600 one that a new breed of artist would be eager to exploit. 348 00:22:57,920 --> 00:23:01,360 We usually think of photography as the medium which created 349 00:23:01,360 --> 00:23:03,520 a true portraiture for the people. 350 00:23:05,480 --> 00:23:08,320 But decades earlier, an art form emerged 351 00:23:08,320 --> 00:23:11,400 which meant hefty sums and lengthy sittings 352 00:23:11,400 --> 00:23:13,000 would be a thing of the past. 353 00:23:18,640 --> 00:23:20,160 Brighton's Chain Pier 354 00:23:20,160 --> 00:23:23,440 was one of the humming centres of this portrait revolution. 355 00:23:26,000 --> 00:23:27,600 In the early 19th century, 356 00:23:27,600 --> 00:23:31,400 holiday-makers could peel off the promenade, out of the sun, 357 00:23:31,400 --> 00:23:33,480 and into a darkened room, 358 00:23:33,480 --> 00:23:36,640 where, for a couple of shillings and two minutes of their time, 359 00:23:36,640 --> 00:23:40,480 they could purchase their portrait as a souvenir of the day. 360 00:23:42,040 --> 00:23:43,480 Hundreds of artists, 361 00:23:43,480 --> 00:23:47,160 wielding lightning scissors and minuscule paint brushes, 362 00:23:47,160 --> 00:23:50,280 set up shop in towns and cities across Britain, 363 00:23:50,280 --> 00:23:53,920 churning out likenesses that catered to our human obsession 364 00:23:53,920 --> 00:23:57,160 to see and own images of ourselves. 365 00:24:01,960 --> 00:24:04,720 Silhouettes, also known as shades, 366 00:24:04,720 --> 00:24:08,920 a kind of trace profile of individual persons, 367 00:24:08,920 --> 00:24:11,800 sometimes family groups as well, 368 00:24:11,800 --> 00:24:15,680 would genuinely revolutionise who portraiture was for, 369 00:24:15,680 --> 00:24:17,440 who could own it. 370 00:24:17,440 --> 00:24:21,240 Ironically, I think, they were based on a craving 371 00:24:21,240 --> 00:24:23,800 to imitate rather grand objects - 372 00:24:23,800 --> 00:24:26,480 coins, medals, cameos - 373 00:24:26,480 --> 00:24:29,240 things reserved for the mighty. 374 00:24:29,240 --> 00:24:31,960 But they were done so quickly and done so cheaply 375 00:24:31,960 --> 00:24:35,080 that almost anybody with a modest income 376 00:24:35,080 --> 00:24:36,880 could afford to have them done. 377 00:24:38,800 --> 00:24:41,080 All sorts of technical refinements - 378 00:24:41,080 --> 00:24:45,400 partly smudging, partly exquisite kind of free painting, 379 00:24:45,400 --> 00:24:48,640 could embellish the basic profile outline. 380 00:24:48,640 --> 00:24:50,960 Details of hair style, wig, 381 00:24:50,960 --> 00:24:55,360 little ribbons at the end of your pigtail, collars, bonnets... 382 00:24:55,360 --> 00:24:57,320 You name it, you could have it. 383 00:24:59,120 --> 00:25:02,120 But their strength was in their simplicity, 384 00:25:02,120 --> 00:25:05,200 and the infinite variety of the human face. 385 00:25:07,720 --> 00:25:11,000 And when you look at them, actually, what is remarkable is, 386 00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:16,320 you do actually have the strongest sense of the personality of these sitters - 387 00:25:16,320 --> 00:25:18,840 upright, grandiose, 388 00:25:18,840 --> 00:25:21,160 simple, honest, demure, 389 00:25:21,160 --> 00:25:24,200 young ones, old ones, babies, grandpas, family groups, 390 00:25:24,200 --> 00:25:27,120 sometimes pets, absolutely everything. 391 00:25:27,120 --> 00:25:31,600 So, it's not surprising that they were in tremendous demand. 392 00:25:31,600 --> 00:25:35,120 So, for the first time, anyone who had just a little money 393 00:25:35,120 --> 00:25:40,520 could be part of the world of silhouette portraiture. 394 00:25:40,520 --> 00:25:42,360 And that's what made the silhouette 395 00:25:42,360 --> 00:25:46,640 the very first authentic portraiture of the people. 396 00:25:49,520 --> 00:25:50,960 But for some artists, 397 00:25:50,960 --> 00:25:53,720 the "snip me quick" approach to portraiture 398 00:25:53,720 --> 00:25:57,920 could never truly capture the heroic spirit of the people. 399 00:26:06,880 --> 00:26:10,800 The artist most determined to go beyond shadow likeness 400 00:26:10,800 --> 00:26:14,880 to full-on heroic immortalisation of working people 401 00:26:14,880 --> 00:26:17,880 was the unlikeliest person imaginable. 402 00:26:19,880 --> 00:26:22,160 A man whose melancholy presence 403 00:26:22,160 --> 00:26:26,360 haunted the leafy suburbs of Hampstead in the 1850s. 404 00:26:28,280 --> 00:26:30,040 Ford Madox Brown. 405 00:26:34,960 --> 00:26:38,840 If you want an example of the ultimate outsider in art, 406 00:26:38,840 --> 00:26:41,840 you couldn't do better than Ford Madox Brown. 407 00:26:41,840 --> 00:26:45,720 This is a person with a real genius, a real gift for painting, 408 00:26:45,720 --> 00:26:48,880 but wow, does he make it difficult for himself. 409 00:26:48,880 --> 00:26:52,880 He may be the single most wretched person, 410 00:26:52,880 --> 00:26:57,400 both in terms of criticising himself, relentlessly and endlessly, 411 00:26:57,400 --> 00:27:00,320 and ultimately, the rest of the world as well. 412 00:27:00,320 --> 00:27:03,360 He has it tough, but boy, he really makes it tough. 413 00:27:03,360 --> 00:27:06,800 How do we know this? Well, he keeps an extraordinary diary. 414 00:27:06,800 --> 00:27:09,560 Everything is absolutely here. 415 00:27:09,560 --> 00:27:13,960 How much work he did, long walks in the rain, his insomnia, 416 00:27:13,960 --> 00:27:16,480 his toothache, his belly ache, his ingrown toenails... 417 00:27:16,480 --> 00:27:18,560 You name it, he absolutely has it. 418 00:27:18,560 --> 00:27:21,560 It's as though the cliche about you need to suffer - 419 00:27:21,560 --> 00:27:24,960 wow, how you need to suffer - in order to make art 420 00:27:24,960 --> 00:27:30,040 was written a script, specifically for Ford Madox Brown. 421 00:27:32,280 --> 00:27:34,840 For years, he struggled to sell his work, 422 00:27:34,840 --> 00:27:39,280 or gain the recognition he felt he deserved from the art establishment, 423 00:27:39,280 --> 00:27:43,680 leaving Ford Madox Brown in a state of perpetual despair. 424 00:27:46,280 --> 00:27:51,680 But one day, in 1852, he stumbled into this street in Hampstead 425 00:27:51,680 --> 00:27:54,360 and was confronted by a vision. 426 00:27:59,680 --> 00:28:05,120 It's a Ford Madox Brown bonus category, solid gold epiphany - 427 00:28:05,120 --> 00:28:07,280 Navvies digging up the road, 428 00:28:07,280 --> 00:28:09,440 waterworks in London. 429 00:28:09,440 --> 00:28:12,400 Plus ca change, right, you fellow Londoners? 430 00:28:12,400 --> 00:28:14,840 Now, navvies were regarded as dodgy customers 431 00:28:14,840 --> 00:28:16,520 in the middle of the 19th century. 432 00:28:16,520 --> 00:28:19,320 They were migrant workers, they were suspicious, 433 00:28:19,320 --> 00:28:21,440 they could come and go as they wanted. 434 00:28:21,440 --> 00:28:23,400 Not for Ford Maddox Brown. 435 00:28:23,400 --> 00:28:26,520 What he sees in front of him with those navvies 436 00:28:26,520 --> 00:28:29,440 is something like Michelangelo's David. 437 00:28:29,440 --> 00:28:33,520 They represent everything that is noble in English life, 438 00:28:33,520 --> 00:28:37,320 amidst the dross and the misery and hypocrisy and rubbish 439 00:28:37,320 --> 00:28:39,760 with which he thinks he's surrounded. 440 00:28:41,520 --> 00:28:44,640 He begins in a rushing fury of enthusiasm 441 00:28:44,640 --> 00:28:46,960 and for the next 13 years, 442 00:28:46,960 --> 00:28:50,600 this labour of love remains his consuming obsession. 443 00:28:53,000 --> 00:28:57,680 Describing the enterprise as a "species of intoxication", 444 00:28:57,680 --> 00:29:01,400 for the first time, he's really happy about what he's doing. 445 00:29:03,600 --> 00:29:08,080 He would muster all his skill as a painter to bestow on these men 446 00:29:08,080 --> 00:29:12,520 the dignity usually reserved for the great heroes of history. 447 00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:15,760 Well, if you can hack your way 448 00:29:15,760 --> 00:29:19,040 through the forest of Victorian people, 449 00:29:19,040 --> 00:29:22,960 you do get to the heroic central idea 450 00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:27,560 that was burning away in Ford Madox Brown's feverish brain 451 00:29:27,560 --> 00:29:30,120 for all those years. 452 00:29:30,120 --> 00:29:35,200 These four navvies, illuminated by hot July sunlight, 453 00:29:35,200 --> 00:29:38,200 so that the figures who'd be in the darkness 454 00:29:38,200 --> 00:29:42,000 of the Victorian social hierarchy and its imagination - 455 00:29:42,000 --> 00:29:46,120 the manual toilers - become genuinely noble types. 456 00:29:46,120 --> 00:29:49,360 They could almost be taken out of Renaissance sculpture. 457 00:29:49,360 --> 00:29:52,320 They look beautiful, particularly the figure on the left, 458 00:29:52,320 --> 00:29:57,840 with this handsome profile and this sort of perfectly chiselled body. 459 00:29:59,120 --> 00:30:02,080 In the shadows, there's a pile up of characters 460 00:30:02,080 --> 00:30:06,080 embodying the evils and ruin of violence and dishonesty. 461 00:30:09,160 --> 00:30:10,840 Vagrant children, 462 00:30:10,840 --> 00:30:12,320 the idle rich, 463 00:30:12,320 --> 00:30:14,160 the unemployed 464 00:30:14,160 --> 00:30:16,000 and the downright shifty. 465 00:30:17,920 --> 00:30:21,400 In his eagerness to leave nothing and no-one out, 466 00:30:21,400 --> 00:30:24,280 Brown overdoes the walk-on parts, 467 00:30:24,280 --> 00:30:27,680 so that his central message gets lost in the crush. 468 00:30:29,920 --> 00:30:32,400 There is some wonderful painting that goes on here, 469 00:30:32,400 --> 00:30:37,120 but it's a painting of great, fastidious overwork, one has to say. 470 00:30:37,120 --> 00:30:41,960 That's the most magnificent shovel - with its clotted, mortar-y surface - 471 00:30:41,960 --> 00:30:44,320 that you'll ever find in any English painting. 472 00:30:44,320 --> 00:30:47,600 The scarf around this figure's head here 473 00:30:47,600 --> 00:30:52,200 is done with the kind of finicky beauty of a needle worker, 474 00:30:52,200 --> 00:30:55,680 a tapestry maker - it's brilliantly coloured, it's a beautiful thing. 475 00:30:55,680 --> 00:30:58,920 But it is, essentially, slightly unreal. 476 00:30:58,920 --> 00:31:00,680 There is not a trace of dirt 477 00:31:00,680 --> 00:31:04,160 or grime or soot or grease or oil on it at all. 478 00:31:04,160 --> 00:31:09,840 And yet, something extraordinary kind of registers in all this. 479 00:31:09,840 --> 00:31:15,880 If we actually think of it not essentially as a kind of summary of 480 00:31:15,880 --> 00:31:21,240 Victorian social reality, but as a kind of social altar piece, 481 00:31:21,240 --> 00:31:22,760 complete with the frame - 482 00:31:22,760 --> 00:31:25,520 look at that frame, especially designed for the picture 483 00:31:25,520 --> 00:31:28,480 and biblical inscriptions over it - 484 00:31:28,480 --> 00:31:31,160 then we can see that it was, in some ways, 485 00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:35,040 a hymn to the redemptive quality of labour, 486 00:31:35,040 --> 00:31:39,040 by which Ford Madox Brown lived his entire life. 487 00:31:41,600 --> 00:31:44,960 For all its problems, the picture did give Ford Madox Brown 488 00:31:44,960 --> 00:31:47,960 the critical acclaim he'd always craved. 489 00:31:49,680 --> 00:31:52,960 But it was possible to make heroic images of working people 490 00:31:52,960 --> 00:31:55,400 with natural simplicity, 491 00:31:55,400 --> 00:31:57,560 rather than stagy overcrowding. 492 00:31:58,760 --> 00:32:01,560 It was done with a quite different medium... 493 00:32:03,240 --> 00:32:04,560 ..photography. 494 00:32:06,680 --> 00:32:10,280 These images of the fishermen and women of Newhaven 495 00:32:10,280 --> 00:32:13,160 were captured in Scotland in the 1840s. 496 00:32:14,240 --> 00:32:17,960 They came about as the result of a personal alchemy - 497 00:32:17,960 --> 00:32:22,680 an artistic partnership, forged here on Calton Hill in Edinburgh. 498 00:32:26,440 --> 00:32:29,320 The two figures involved were called Robert Adamson 499 00:32:29,320 --> 00:32:31,000 and David Octavius Hill, 500 00:32:31,000 --> 00:32:34,440 and they represent, really, the two halves of the Scottish brain. 501 00:32:34,440 --> 00:32:38,240 On the one hand, the scientific and on the other hand, the poetic. 502 00:32:39,800 --> 00:32:42,360 Robert Adamson was the scientist - 503 00:32:42,360 --> 00:32:44,280 rather shy, reserved, 504 00:32:44,280 --> 00:32:47,000 a little bit nervous, inward, not very articulate, 505 00:32:47,000 --> 00:32:49,200 and often quite ill. 506 00:32:49,200 --> 00:32:52,240 David Octavius Hill, on the other hand, was outgoing, 507 00:32:52,240 --> 00:32:55,080 expansive, a landscape painter - 508 00:32:55,080 --> 00:32:58,920 rather fresh, simple, quite pretty landscapes. 509 00:32:58,920 --> 00:33:02,000 Together, they were much more than the sum of their parts. 510 00:33:02,000 --> 00:33:05,920 They really did create an astonishing kind of photography, 511 00:33:05,920 --> 00:33:08,880 so early on in its history. 512 00:33:12,280 --> 00:33:16,520 Hill and Adamson had decided that this brand-new medium 513 00:33:16,520 --> 00:33:19,320 would not just be reserved for the socially grand. 514 00:33:20,600 --> 00:33:23,600 Like so many Victorians, they were dismayed 515 00:33:23,600 --> 00:33:28,160 by what factory life had done to ordinary working people. 516 00:33:28,160 --> 00:33:32,560 But rather than train their camera lens on the urban gloom of the city, 517 00:33:32,560 --> 00:33:34,520 they looked, romantically, 518 00:33:34,520 --> 00:33:38,720 for a community not yet machine-stamped by the modern world. 519 00:33:41,800 --> 00:33:44,720 And they found such a place on their doorstep, 520 00:33:44,720 --> 00:33:46,280 a mile or so away. 521 00:33:52,800 --> 00:33:56,120 Well, why did they think that they'd found the ideal community 522 00:33:56,120 --> 00:33:58,560 they were looking for, here in Newhaven? 523 00:33:58,560 --> 00:33:59,960 Well, it was a fishing village 524 00:33:59,960 --> 00:34:02,920 that hadn't really changed for hundreds of years 525 00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:05,960 and didn't seem to be about to change, either. 526 00:34:08,200 --> 00:34:10,640 It was a place of about 2,000 souls. 527 00:34:10,640 --> 00:34:14,080 The families all knew each other, they all married each other, 528 00:34:14,080 --> 00:34:16,360 they all went out to work in the same way, 529 00:34:16,360 --> 00:34:17,800 the men often at night. 530 00:34:17,800 --> 00:34:21,840 The women, who did really a lot of the tough, rough work, 531 00:34:21,840 --> 00:34:25,480 heaved those baskets of fish up the hill to Edinburgh. 532 00:34:27,200 --> 00:34:30,640 They knew, of course, that Newhaven was no Utopia, 533 00:34:30,640 --> 00:34:34,000 but their affection for it was only increased by the fact 534 00:34:34,000 --> 00:34:36,840 that life here was not easy. 535 00:34:39,800 --> 00:34:43,040 There were those terrible nights when women looked to the storm 536 00:34:43,040 --> 00:34:45,520 and thought maybe their menfolk weren't coming back, 537 00:34:45,520 --> 00:34:48,200 and at those times, they leaned on each other. 538 00:34:48,200 --> 00:34:53,400 It was a community which got through hard times, shoulder to shoulder. 539 00:34:57,000 --> 00:34:59,720 What the two photographers knew they were looking at 540 00:34:59,720 --> 00:35:04,520 was exactly what had gone missing from industrial Scotland - 541 00:35:04,520 --> 00:35:08,160 the social solidarity of friends and families. 542 00:35:09,640 --> 00:35:12,120 This is what they wanted to put on record. 543 00:35:14,880 --> 00:35:16,920 Their images, carefully composed 544 00:35:16,920 --> 00:35:20,360 and always photographed in the glare of the coastal sun, 545 00:35:20,360 --> 00:35:24,720 captured not only what they saw, but how they felt about these people. 546 00:35:28,160 --> 00:35:31,760 In the weather-beaten faces of these men, women and children, 547 00:35:31,760 --> 00:35:34,480 they'd found their working-class heroes. 548 00:35:36,920 --> 00:35:39,040 And with the genius of their camera, 549 00:35:39,040 --> 00:35:41,840 they had transformed them into high art. 550 00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:50,400 Well, this is really nothing short of a miracle, I think, 551 00:35:50,400 --> 00:35:53,480 in the history of image-making in British life, 552 00:35:53,480 --> 00:35:58,280 because just a very few years after photography is invented in Britain, 553 00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:02,800 we have an extraordinary portrait of an entire world 554 00:36:02,800 --> 00:36:05,560 of the fishing community at Newhaven. 555 00:36:05,560 --> 00:36:08,920 And it's done with such vividness and immediacy and drama, 556 00:36:08,920 --> 00:36:11,080 without any kind of arty poses, 557 00:36:11,080 --> 00:36:16,240 that it's already streaked miles ahead of anything painting could do. 558 00:36:16,240 --> 00:36:17,600 But most of all, 559 00:36:17,600 --> 00:36:22,480 you have an extraordinary range of powerful human types. 560 00:36:22,480 --> 00:36:25,840 Here, for example, is an astonishing study - 561 00:36:25,840 --> 00:36:27,920 very dramatic, very beautiful - 562 00:36:27,920 --> 00:36:31,640 of one of the fisherman, called Willie Liston, 563 00:36:31,640 --> 00:36:35,840 who is cleaning a line with the razor edge of mussels. 564 00:36:35,840 --> 00:36:39,520 They've posed him with his hat falling down over his brow, 565 00:36:39,520 --> 00:36:41,680 so that it casts a deep shadow 566 00:36:41,680 --> 00:36:46,760 over his unbelievably handsome, beautiful face. 567 00:36:46,760 --> 00:36:49,560 You know, this is the Marlon Brando of Newhaven - 568 00:36:49,560 --> 00:36:51,200 and gorgeously dressed. 569 00:36:51,200 --> 00:36:54,400 If you can possibly be a dandy and a fisherman, it's him. 570 00:36:54,400 --> 00:36:56,920 So, you have all the classic attributes 571 00:36:56,920 --> 00:36:59,160 of Art's ideal of what beauty is, 572 00:36:59,160 --> 00:37:03,120 but you have a real bloke, doing a real thing in a real place. 573 00:37:04,560 --> 00:37:07,360 And the miracle is, I still don't get, actually, 574 00:37:07,360 --> 00:37:11,200 how the two men managed to get these people 575 00:37:11,200 --> 00:37:15,120 to be so unselfconscious in what they were doing. 576 00:37:18,240 --> 00:37:19,960 In the eyes of the photographers, 577 00:37:19,960 --> 00:37:23,480 the women of Newhaven formed a real sisterhood. 578 00:37:23,480 --> 00:37:27,320 The society of what they themselves called "chummies" - 579 00:37:27,320 --> 00:37:30,080 mutually supportive, gossipy, 580 00:37:30,080 --> 00:37:32,240 un-intimidated by men, 581 00:37:32,240 --> 00:37:34,640 whether fishermen or photographers. 582 00:37:37,920 --> 00:37:40,240 Hill and Adamson know, actually, 583 00:37:40,240 --> 00:37:43,040 what the engine of Newhaven life is about. 584 00:37:43,040 --> 00:37:46,440 Its pulse, its motor, are its women. 585 00:37:46,440 --> 00:37:49,040 So, the women are really beautifully done. 586 00:37:49,040 --> 00:37:52,240 Occasionally, old ladies and widows appear, 587 00:37:52,240 --> 00:37:56,600 but you know, it's very striking how the beauties of Newhaven 588 00:37:56,600 --> 00:38:00,040 make a majestic appearance in these pictures. 589 00:38:08,880 --> 00:38:13,200 Girls, young women are what makes Newhaven tick. 590 00:38:13,200 --> 00:38:15,400 They are the life and soul. 591 00:38:15,400 --> 00:38:18,120 The women hold the whole thing together. 592 00:38:20,520 --> 00:38:25,200 Hill and Adamson's photographs were so natural, yet so dramatic, 593 00:38:25,200 --> 00:38:28,240 that they silenced those who insisted that photography 594 00:38:28,240 --> 00:38:31,400 could never really aspire to the heights of Art. 595 00:38:32,440 --> 00:38:35,680 This was, undeniably, great art - 596 00:38:35,680 --> 00:38:38,640 and critics raved about the beauty of the fishwives, 597 00:38:38,640 --> 00:38:42,840 comparing their portraits to works by Rembrandt, Reynolds and Raeburn. 598 00:38:47,400 --> 00:38:49,400 But in the early 20th century, 599 00:38:49,400 --> 00:38:54,040 the camera focused on women in a way that was far less romantic. 600 00:38:58,720 --> 00:39:00,000 CCTV ZOOMS 601 00:39:02,440 --> 00:39:04,080 In 1913, 602 00:39:04,080 --> 00:39:07,840 art galleries across Britain received some suspect visitors - 603 00:39:09,920 --> 00:39:11,360 the suffragettes. 604 00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:18,440 Though they'd pay their entrance fee like everyone else, 605 00:39:18,440 --> 00:39:20,960 they were not here to admire the art. 606 00:39:22,600 --> 00:39:25,120 They were scoping out the latest frontline 607 00:39:25,120 --> 00:39:28,840 in their increasingly militant campaign for the vote. 608 00:39:31,200 --> 00:39:33,880 Well, the suffragettes, in their righteous indignation, 609 00:39:33,880 --> 00:39:36,600 hated the notion that art was actually more precious 610 00:39:36,600 --> 00:39:39,320 than matters of human life. 611 00:39:39,320 --> 00:39:42,480 They took particular exception to the fact 612 00:39:42,480 --> 00:39:47,480 that men were drooling over the bodies of naked women in museums, 613 00:39:47,480 --> 00:39:51,800 while having a deaf ear to the living cause of Votes For Women, 614 00:39:51,800 --> 00:39:55,440 and the other many oppressions to which women were subject. 615 00:39:55,440 --> 00:39:58,560 So, they decided to do something about it - 616 00:39:58,560 --> 00:40:03,600 something that would shock the complacency of those same men 617 00:40:03,600 --> 00:40:05,280 who ruled the art world. 618 00:40:07,080 --> 00:40:11,680 Suddenly, all over London, you could hear the sound of tinkling glass 619 00:40:11,680 --> 00:40:15,400 as militant suffragettes took axes and meat cleavers 620 00:40:15,400 --> 00:40:17,720 to the treasures of the art world. 621 00:40:20,640 --> 00:40:23,360 And one of their targets resided here, 622 00:40:23,360 --> 00:40:25,400 in the National Portrait Gallery. 623 00:40:30,160 --> 00:40:33,240 The act was so violent and so disturbing 624 00:40:33,240 --> 00:40:36,840 that it got all of Fleet Street in a frenzy. 625 00:40:36,840 --> 00:40:41,360 It's the 18th of July, 1914. What do the morning papers say? 626 00:40:41,360 --> 00:40:43,760 Here's our morning paper coverage. 627 00:40:43,760 --> 00:40:46,760 They all have one fantastic story. 628 00:40:48,400 --> 00:40:51,280 "Picture outrage by wild woman! 629 00:40:51,280 --> 00:40:53,680 "A fury with a chopper! 630 00:40:55,320 --> 00:40:58,480 "Wild Woman at National Portrait Gallery!" 631 00:40:58,480 --> 00:41:01,480 And what has happened is that the previous morning, 632 00:41:01,480 --> 00:41:06,080 a woman who turns out to be called Ann Hunt has taken a meat cleaver 633 00:41:06,080 --> 00:41:08,640 and actually smashed the glass 634 00:41:08,640 --> 00:41:13,120 and cut up Sir John Millais' portrait of Thomas Carlyle, 635 00:41:13,120 --> 00:41:15,280 the great historian. 636 00:41:15,280 --> 00:41:18,880 The choice of target probably wasn't an accident. 637 00:41:18,880 --> 00:41:21,600 By attacking Thomas Carlyle - a founder of the gallery 638 00:41:21,600 --> 00:41:23,120 and inclined to thinking about 639 00:41:23,120 --> 00:41:26,560 the great heroes of history as exclusively male - 640 00:41:26,560 --> 00:41:30,600 Ann Hunt was hitting the patriarchy where it hurt the most. 641 00:41:33,640 --> 00:41:35,080 The interesting thing to me 642 00:41:35,080 --> 00:41:38,040 is that the way it's described in some of these reports 643 00:41:38,040 --> 00:41:42,320 is as if Thomas Carlyle had been personally attacked. 644 00:41:42,320 --> 00:41:44,800 He's actually been dead for 25 years. 645 00:41:44,800 --> 00:41:48,880 It's a sort of backhand complement to the power of portraiture. 646 00:41:48,880 --> 00:41:53,520 "Examination of the picture showed that the injuries were serious - 647 00:41:53,520 --> 00:41:55,960 "one cut, nearly a foot long, 648 00:41:55,960 --> 00:41:58,920 "extended from several inches above the head, 649 00:41:58,920 --> 00:42:01,680 "to below the moustache on the left side of the face. 650 00:42:03,840 --> 00:42:05,840 "Another commenced above the head, 651 00:42:05,840 --> 00:42:08,320 "practically lopped off the left ear." 652 00:42:09,760 --> 00:42:11,960 Gosh, there's not much left of Carlyle at all. 653 00:42:11,960 --> 00:42:13,280 What a terrible mess. 654 00:42:15,640 --> 00:42:18,280 There is this tremendous uproar, 655 00:42:18,280 --> 00:42:20,240 a fantastic hue and cry. 656 00:42:20,240 --> 00:42:23,440 And it's again, a sort of tribute to the power of art, 657 00:42:23,440 --> 00:42:27,320 that it could become a target of all this righteous rage. 658 00:42:28,480 --> 00:42:30,800 Ann Hunt was locked away - 659 00:42:30,800 --> 00:42:33,480 but at a time when every suffragette prisoner 660 00:42:33,480 --> 00:42:36,000 was championed as a martyr for the cause, 661 00:42:36,000 --> 00:42:39,520 the authorities devised extraordinary new measures 662 00:42:39,520 --> 00:42:42,360 to put an end to the suffragette rampage. 663 00:42:48,440 --> 00:42:51,760 A new type of portrait was born - 664 00:42:51,760 --> 00:42:55,880 one we are all too familiar with today. 665 00:42:55,880 --> 00:42:58,120 Surveillance photographs - 666 00:42:58,120 --> 00:43:00,920 secret photographs taken by the state 667 00:43:00,920 --> 00:43:04,480 and circulated around threatened institutions, 668 00:43:04,480 --> 00:43:08,320 in order to identify potential attackers. 669 00:43:11,000 --> 00:43:12,800 Now, of course, the suffragettes 670 00:43:12,800 --> 00:43:16,360 were not about to allow themselves to be photographed. 671 00:43:16,360 --> 00:43:19,320 They were not going to have mug-shots taken of them 672 00:43:19,320 --> 00:43:21,320 when they entered prison. 673 00:43:21,320 --> 00:43:26,320 So, all sorts of new ways had to be invented in secret, 674 00:43:26,320 --> 00:43:28,040 to catch these images. 675 00:43:29,400 --> 00:43:32,000 The latest camera technology was used - 676 00:43:32,000 --> 00:43:34,360 long lenses, fast films... 677 00:43:35,440 --> 00:43:38,040 ..and they used particular photographers. 678 00:43:38,040 --> 00:43:39,400 There was a creepy little man - 679 00:43:39,400 --> 00:43:41,760 I expect he was creepy - called Mr Barrett, 680 00:43:41,760 --> 00:43:44,360 who used to sit outside Holloway Prison 681 00:43:44,360 --> 00:43:46,840 so that he could get shots of the women 682 00:43:46,840 --> 00:43:49,360 exercising in the exercise yard. 683 00:43:49,360 --> 00:43:52,840 And the results are these remarkable photos - 684 00:43:52,840 --> 00:43:54,880 really sinister things. 685 00:44:11,560 --> 00:44:14,560 If you think about portraits as essentially 686 00:44:14,560 --> 00:44:19,280 based on an understanding between an artist and a sitter, 687 00:44:19,280 --> 00:44:22,760 there is none of that understanding here. 688 00:44:22,760 --> 00:44:25,480 These are all about mistrust, 689 00:44:25,480 --> 00:44:28,920 suspicion, danger and coercion. 690 00:44:35,240 --> 00:44:38,560 But the images are themselves striking 691 00:44:38,560 --> 00:44:41,280 and actually beautiful, I think - 692 00:44:41,280 --> 00:44:44,000 and unintentionally heroic. 693 00:44:45,880 --> 00:44:48,400 The suffering these women endured for the vote 694 00:44:48,400 --> 00:44:51,720 is written all over that gaunt face. 695 00:44:56,440 --> 00:44:58,440 In the summer of 1914, 696 00:44:58,440 --> 00:45:02,120 the suffragettes suspended their campaign 697 00:45:02,120 --> 00:45:06,400 and the heroism of the women gave way to the patriotism of men. 698 00:45:08,680 --> 00:45:12,320 As thousands of fresh-faced troops marched off to war, 699 00:45:12,320 --> 00:45:16,880 loved ones worried about what might happen to their boys at the front. 700 00:45:16,880 --> 00:45:18,920 SHELL FIRE 701 00:45:21,040 --> 00:45:24,920 For many, the answer was beyond their worst nightmares. 702 00:45:29,360 --> 00:45:31,280 Over the course of the conflict, 703 00:45:31,280 --> 00:45:36,240 thousands of men were admitted to a pioneering facial surgery unit 704 00:45:36,240 --> 00:45:38,640 run by Dr Harold Gillies. 705 00:45:38,640 --> 00:45:43,120 Their faces had been blown to pieces by the machines of war. 706 00:45:44,880 --> 00:45:47,800 It was in him that they invested all their hopes 707 00:45:47,800 --> 00:45:49,960 for a return to normal life. 708 00:45:51,640 --> 00:45:55,840 Gillies was the head surgeon in this facial surgery unit, 709 00:45:55,840 --> 00:45:58,720 but he was also very adventurous. 710 00:45:58,720 --> 00:46:01,000 He was something of a maverick. 711 00:46:01,000 --> 00:46:03,440 He wanted to do something really ambitious, 712 00:46:03,440 --> 00:46:07,200 which would bring back some semblance of humanity 713 00:46:07,200 --> 00:46:10,480 to these terribly disfigured people. 714 00:46:10,480 --> 00:46:14,800 Normally, all that happened was to save a life, 715 00:46:14,800 --> 00:46:19,720 skin was pulled over this deep wound, and they were sutured up, 716 00:46:19,720 --> 00:46:22,600 there were stitches and it was hoped that the soldier 717 00:46:22,600 --> 00:46:27,160 might more or less resemble something that wasn't a monster. 718 00:46:27,160 --> 00:46:30,760 Gillies was both very imaginative and deeply compassionate. 719 00:46:30,760 --> 00:46:33,680 He had something much more aesthetic in mind - 720 00:46:33,680 --> 00:46:35,600 a true remodelling. 721 00:46:35,600 --> 00:46:39,160 He wanted to do something to really rebuild a face 722 00:46:39,160 --> 00:46:42,280 and rebuild a sense of their dignity, 723 00:46:42,280 --> 00:46:44,840 the possibility of self-respect. 724 00:46:47,320 --> 00:46:50,880 In order to take the measure of the damaged tissue 725 00:46:50,880 --> 00:46:52,640 and how best it might be repaired, 726 00:46:52,640 --> 00:46:57,160 Gillies needed to study images of the wounded faces in colour. 727 00:46:58,880 --> 00:47:02,120 When he discovered that the artist Henry Tonks - 728 00:47:02,120 --> 00:47:05,000 professor at the Slade School of Art - 729 00:47:05,000 --> 00:47:06,800 was working at the hospital, 730 00:47:06,800 --> 00:47:10,480 he lost no time in approaching him to see if he could help. 731 00:47:12,000 --> 00:47:16,000 At 52, Tonks was too old for active service, 732 00:47:16,000 --> 00:47:18,520 but, determined to do his bit for the war effort, 733 00:47:18,520 --> 00:47:20,520 had volunteered as an orderly. 734 00:47:22,440 --> 00:47:24,280 The important thing about Tonks 735 00:47:24,280 --> 00:47:27,600 was that he learnt his drawing in another life. 736 00:47:27,600 --> 00:47:29,960 He had been a surgeon. 737 00:47:29,960 --> 00:47:32,120 That's the way he'd started his career. 738 00:47:32,120 --> 00:47:35,480 In fact, he'd learnt drawing at medical school 739 00:47:35,480 --> 00:47:38,640 and then, as a demonstrator in anatomy. 740 00:47:38,640 --> 00:47:41,680 He'd been seized by an art passion. 741 00:47:41,680 --> 00:47:44,880 He wanted to draw anything he could - 742 00:47:44,880 --> 00:47:48,360 corpses if necessary, live bodies when he could. 743 00:47:48,360 --> 00:47:50,320 He made it his passion. 744 00:47:50,320 --> 00:47:54,920 So, it was through medicine, through surgery, that he came to art. 745 00:47:54,920 --> 00:47:56,760 Together, they decided 746 00:47:56,760 --> 00:48:00,080 that something extraordinary could be produced. 747 00:48:00,080 --> 00:48:04,160 They would make a kind of anti-portrait, if you like - 748 00:48:04,160 --> 00:48:08,160 a portrait of a face becoming rescued, 749 00:48:08,160 --> 00:48:10,160 and from that ambition, 750 00:48:10,160 --> 00:48:14,480 from that wiring together of two extraordinary personalities, 751 00:48:14,480 --> 00:48:18,080 the most remarkable images - 752 00:48:18,080 --> 00:48:20,880 unforgettable images - came about. 753 00:48:34,280 --> 00:48:37,120 Confronted with what he described as 754 00:48:37,120 --> 00:48:40,320 "the poor, ruined faces of England", 755 00:48:40,320 --> 00:48:44,000 Tonks created imagery that transcends its purpose 756 00:48:44,000 --> 00:48:46,480 as mere medical illustration. 757 00:48:50,400 --> 00:48:53,720 With his unique and indivisibly anatomical 758 00:48:53,720 --> 00:48:57,720 and artistic grasp of flesh and bone, 759 00:48:57,720 --> 00:48:59,840 he achieved a perfect union 760 00:48:59,840 --> 00:49:04,240 between clinical dispassion and artistic compassion... 761 00:49:06,000 --> 00:49:10,840 ..creating, indirectly, works of humane beauty. 762 00:49:16,440 --> 00:49:18,360 Look at this face here. 763 00:49:18,360 --> 00:49:23,240 This belongs to a Bradford tailor called Walter Ashworth, 764 00:49:23,240 --> 00:49:27,200 who was actually very badly wounded on the very first day - 765 00:49:27,200 --> 00:49:30,440 in fact, probably the first minutes of the Battle of the Somme. 766 00:49:30,440 --> 00:49:32,680 His regiment, the Bradford Pals, 767 00:49:32,680 --> 00:49:35,040 didn't even really get beyond their own lines 768 00:49:35,040 --> 00:49:38,120 before they were cut to pieces by enemy fire. 769 00:49:38,120 --> 00:49:39,920 He was terribly badly wounded, 770 00:49:39,920 --> 00:49:43,200 he was brought to the hospital at Aldershot, 771 00:49:43,200 --> 00:49:44,640 looking like that. 772 00:49:46,200 --> 00:49:52,120 The whole of his chin and mouth had been absolutely, horribly, shot away 773 00:49:52,120 --> 00:49:55,680 and there's the diagram done by Gillies and Tonks, 774 00:49:55,680 --> 00:49:57,120 for what to do with it. 775 00:49:57,120 --> 00:49:59,680 And there's the result of the surgery, 776 00:49:59,680 --> 00:50:02,520 which is really a miracle, in a way. 777 00:50:02,520 --> 00:50:04,360 Typically, Gillies said 778 00:50:04,360 --> 00:50:08,680 it left him with a whimsical, but a not unpleasant smile. 779 00:50:08,680 --> 00:50:11,840 It's an absolutely beautiful portrait, 780 00:50:11,840 --> 00:50:16,160 one of the most memorable British portraits I've ever seen. 781 00:50:16,160 --> 00:50:19,080 And here, the medium is very important - it's pastel. 782 00:50:19,080 --> 00:50:23,000 Pastel's the softest of all drawing mediums and therefore, 783 00:50:23,000 --> 00:50:26,200 it's incredibly appropriate for a kind of drawing 784 00:50:26,200 --> 00:50:28,800 which is to do with the malleability, 785 00:50:28,800 --> 00:50:34,160 the softness, the changeability of actual, modelled flesh. 786 00:50:34,160 --> 00:50:37,440 So Tonks, who is a genius draftsman, 787 00:50:37,440 --> 00:50:39,400 uses it very tenderly. 788 00:50:43,240 --> 00:50:45,040 Look again at those two faces 789 00:50:45,040 --> 00:50:49,120 and tell me that's not the product of a real heart and soul. 790 00:50:49,120 --> 00:50:51,600 Here's the thing about Henry Tonks - 791 00:50:51,600 --> 00:50:54,440 the other thing which he was passionate about 792 00:50:54,440 --> 00:50:59,440 was that art had a morally redemptive function. 793 00:50:59,440 --> 00:51:02,320 This, in a world where everything is about Modernist experiment - 794 00:51:02,320 --> 00:51:06,000 art was morally redemptive, said Tonks. 795 00:51:06,000 --> 00:51:08,200 Which is why he said, 796 00:51:08,200 --> 00:51:12,120 "These are the only works of which I am not ashamed." 797 00:51:18,800 --> 00:51:22,600 All of our artists who've pictured the faces of the people 798 00:51:22,600 --> 00:51:27,280 were in some way kicking against restraints, decorum, 799 00:51:27,280 --> 00:51:30,400 the barriers of taste which prescribed 800 00:51:30,400 --> 00:51:33,760 who was and who wasn't suitable for portrayal. 801 00:51:35,640 --> 00:51:36,880 In our own time, 802 00:51:36,880 --> 00:51:41,200 cultural barriers have become the great bugbear of British life, 803 00:51:41,200 --> 00:51:46,000 forces which want to pigeonhole us into this or that identity. 804 00:51:47,280 --> 00:51:49,720 And working today in Liverpool, 805 00:51:49,720 --> 00:51:52,120 there are two artists who've made a career 806 00:51:52,120 --> 00:51:55,160 out of resisting those separations - 807 00:51:55,160 --> 00:51:57,880 between cultures, Indian and British, 808 00:51:57,880 --> 00:52:01,080 art, high and low, between each other. 809 00:52:02,960 --> 00:52:04,560 The Singh Twins. 810 00:52:10,760 --> 00:52:13,320 Their grandparents fled to Britain 811 00:52:13,320 --> 00:52:16,160 to escape violent division in India. 812 00:52:19,360 --> 00:52:22,160 Our family came to England in 1948. 813 00:52:22,160 --> 00:52:26,200 I think it was during, or just after the partition - 814 00:52:26,200 --> 00:52:30,200 basically, to avoid the political turmoil in Punjab at that time. 815 00:52:30,200 --> 00:52:33,320 My grandfather had already been working in Britain for a while 816 00:52:33,320 --> 00:52:35,280 and he called the rest of the family over here. 817 00:52:35,280 --> 00:52:37,440 - What was your grandfather doing? - He was a peddler. 818 00:52:37,440 --> 00:52:40,280 This is traditional within our particular community of Sikhs, 819 00:52:40,280 --> 00:52:42,400 the Sikh tradition that we come from. 820 00:52:43,760 --> 00:52:46,080 Our father started off helping our grandfather 821 00:52:46,080 --> 00:52:49,280 with the door-to-door sales - the peddling - and then he decided 822 00:52:49,280 --> 00:52:52,360 he wanted to do something that would earn him respect. 823 00:52:53,920 --> 00:52:58,160 Their father trained as a medic, and one of their first portraits 824 00:52:58,160 --> 00:53:00,640 was a tribute to him and his achievements. 825 00:53:02,360 --> 00:53:05,520 It's the archetypal portrait of the migrant story, 826 00:53:05,520 --> 00:53:08,760 of the rags to riches, and it really shows the whole of his life, 827 00:53:08,760 --> 00:53:12,240 from his birth place in Amritsar, and then coming to England through 828 00:53:12,240 --> 00:53:16,280 - the partition... - ..Which is up in the top left corner? - The Golden Temple. 829 00:53:16,280 --> 00:53:20,120 Then, you move to an area of the painting which represents partition. 830 00:53:20,120 --> 00:53:23,720 You have Gandhi striding across India - bleeding India. 831 00:53:23,720 --> 00:53:26,800 And then, the ship that our father came on to England 832 00:53:26,800 --> 00:53:29,680 is Bombay to Tilbury, docking in London. 833 00:53:29,680 --> 00:53:33,160 But then also, the cityscape transitions into that of Liverpool, 834 00:53:33,160 --> 00:53:36,040 which is where the family eventually settled. 835 00:53:36,040 --> 00:53:40,000 That was a painting that we did almost straight out of university, 836 00:53:40,000 --> 00:53:42,480 when we were looking at issues of identity 837 00:53:42,480 --> 00:53:45,200 and the experience of being British Asians. 838 00:53:45,200 --> 00:53:46,920 And I think what we were trying to do 839 00:53:46,920 --> 00:53:49,760 was show a positive image of Asians in Britain. 840 00:53:51,400 --> 00:53:55,120 When we were growing up as teenagers here, it was very much divisive - 841 00:53:55,120 --> 00:53:56,840 assimilation or conformity - 842 00:53:56,840 --> 00:54:00,080 and you almost have to pick one camp or the other. 843 00:54:00,080 --> 00:54:01,840 "Are you British or are you Indian?" 844 00:54:01,840 --> 00:54:05,280 Which was a bizarre concept to us, because of course, being born here, 845 00:54:05,280 --> 00:54:08,400 although our heritage is Indian, we felt both. 846 00:54:08,400 --> 00:54:10,600 We took from both worlds. 847 00:54:13,400 --> 00:54:15,640 Inseparable from each other, 848 00:54:15,640 --> 00:54:18,280 working together side-by-side, 849 00:54:18,280 --> 00:54:21,560 the Singh Twins refuse to make any kind of divide 850 00:54:21,560 --> 00:54:25,520 between their identities as Sikhs and as Britons. 851 00:54:29,320 --> 00:54:34,680 Their determination to be both finds expression in all of their work, 852 00:54:34,680 --> 00:54:38,800 which uses ancient techniques of Indian miniature painting 853 00:54:38,800 --> 00:54:41,760 to tell contemporary British stories. 854 00:54:43,520 --> 00:54:46,120 But it was an approach that didn't win them any fans 855 00:54:46,120 --> 00:54:48,080 at art college in the '80s. 856 00:54:49,520 --> 00:54:52,800 I think it became very clear, quite early on during that course, 857 00:54:52,800 --> 00:54:56,160 that there were taboos within what you could and couldn't study. 858 00:54:56,160 --> 00:54:58,280 The course was very much orientated towards 859 00:54:58,280 --> 00:55:00,240 the so-called "fathers of western art" - 860 00:55:00,240 --> 00:55:02,720 Picasso, Matisse, Gauguin and the likes. 861 00:55:02,720 --> 00:55:06,400 We had always been interested in the more decorative kinds of art, 862 00:55:06,400 --> 00:55:09,040 the romantic periods of pre-Raphaelites, Art Nouveau - 863 00:55:09,040 --> 00:55:11,120 and the other passion of course that we had 864 00:55:11,120 --> 00:55:12,800 was the Indian miniature tradition, 865 00:55:12,800 --> 00:55:15,400 which is akin to the medieval manuscript tradition 866 00:55:15,400 --> 00:55:18,160 in the European style of painting, 867 00:55:18,160 --> 00:55:20,960 which was completely dismissed by our tutors. 868 00:55:20,960 --> 00:55:23,040 I mean, they said, actually to our faces, 869 00:55:23,040 --> 00:55:24,760 that it was backward and outdated 870 00:55:24,760 --> 00:55:27,280 and really had no place within contemporary art 871 00:55:27,280 --> 00:55:29,920 and so, that was a red rag to a bull, really, 872 00:55:29,920 --> 00:55:33,280 Because I think we felt that the criticism we received at art college 873 00:55:33,280 --> 00:55:34,800 went deeper than just art. 874 00:55:34,800 --> 00:55:38,560 We felt it was part of that whole criticism of Asian culture 875 00:55:38,560 --> 00:55:40,640 and the way in which it was perceived - 876 00:55:40,640 --> 00:55:43,520 as being something that was backward and outdated. 877 00:55:43,520 --> 00:55:46,240 The Singh Twins stuck to their guns. 878 00:55:46,240 --> 00:55:49,280 Their work became the visual expression of their refusal 879 00:55:49,280 --> 00:55:51,840 to conform or be ghettoised. 880 00:55:53,360 --> 00:55:56,240 We wanted the work to speak for us and we realised, at that point, 881 00:55:56,240 --> 00:55:58,960 that the work was a political tool in itself, 882 00:55:58,960 --> 00:56:02,320 and just by remaining true to that language 883 00:56:02,320 --> 00:56:05,320 that eventually, we would make the point 884 00:56:05,320 --> 00:56:10,120 and hopefully, get acceptance for that language in contemporary art. 885 00:56:10,120 --> 00:56:11,560 From this true grit 886 00:56:11,560 --> 00:56:14,920 and determination against cultural isolation 887 00:56:14,920 --> 00:56:19,560 comes work that is socially inclusive and expansive. 888 00:56:19,560 --> 00:56:22,560 Nobody in British life is missing. 889 00:56:22,560 --> 00:56:26,160 Paintings that are a riotous, Technicolor expression 890 00:56:26,160 --> 00:56:30,360 of what the face of Britain could and should be. 891 00:56:31,720 --> 00:56:33,280 Well, this particular painting 892 00:56:33,280 --> 00:56:36,760 sums up everything that the Singh Twins do. 893 00:56:36,760 --> 00:56:39,000 If you want an example of something 894 00:56:39,000 --> 00:56:43,320 which perfectly and un-problematically brings together 895 00:56:43,320 --> 00:56:45,320 two different worlds of culture - 896 00:56:45,320 --> 00:56:49,240 the culture of Indian Mughal miniature painting 897 00:56:49,240 --> 00:56:52,400 and the raw culture of Merseyside, 898 00:56:52,400 --> 00:56:54,760 they have so nailed it. 899 00:56:54,760 --> 00:56:58,040 And partly, it's a matter of the composition of the picture. 900 00:56:58,040 --> 00:57:00,160 Down below, we have something like 901 00:57:00,160 --> 00:57:03,640 a Sikh or a Mughal celebration in a lagoon, 902 00:57:03,640 --> 00:57:06,360 these wonderfully stylised little waves, 903 00:57:06,360 --> 00:57:08,920 this beautiful, ornamental decoration. 904 00:57:08,920 --> 00:57:11,800 So lovely and so difficult to do, 905 00:57:11,800 --> 00:57:15,960 even with the perfectly exquisite, fine-boned Singh Twins' fingers. 906 00:57:15,960 --> 00:57:19,880 And then, you notice all of Liverpool happening. 907 00:57:19,880 --> 00:57:21,920 There is the football supporter 908 00:57:21,920 --> 00:57:25,120 in the really unpleasant Union Jack Y-fronts, 909 00:57:25,120 --> 00:57:29,280 there is the tormented wife of a Liverpool football supporter, 910 00:57:29,280 --> 00:57:30,800 looking as though she's about to 911 00:57:30,800 --> 00:57:33,680 drown herself in the Mersey with misery. 912 00:57:34,680 --> 00:57:39,920 There is this wonderful line of policemen descending into the crowd. 913 00:57:39,920 --> 00:57:42,840 On the right-hand side, the Singh family itself 914 00:57:42,840 --> 00:57:46,960 is right in the middle of the rest of Liverpool 915 00:57:46,960 --> 00:57:48,880 and it's a happy family. 916 00:57:50,200 --> 00:57:54,840 The thing is actually alive with sound and noise 917 00:57:54,840 --> 00:57:56,840 and fun and celebration. 918 00:57:56,840 --> 00:58:00,120 It's one big, British party. 919 00:58:04,320 --> 00:58:09,720 Division and suffering and sorrow line the face of Britain, 920 00:58:09,720 --> 00:58:12,520 but this is not a sorrowing picture. 921 00:58:12,520 --> 00:58:15,840 This is a celebration of the fact 922 00:58:15,840 --> 00:58:19,280 that there is not one face of Britain. 923 00:58:19,280 --> 00:58:20,800 There are many. 924 00:58:20,800 --> 00:58:24,680 And we should shout that from the rooftops, as they do, 925 00:58:24,680 --> 00:58:28,080 with the Mersey rolling past.