n 1963, Julia Trevelyan Oman beginning making a name for herself as a set designer for BBC television, but was finding the job rather uninteresting. Armed with a camera she took to the streets of the Clapham Junction and took candid photographs of the working-class and immigrant children that lived there. She had the idea for a book, but didn't know anyone that could write captions for it. When she showed the pictures to Richard Sadler at Constable, he connected her with B. S. Johnson. Oman wanted her book to be titled "Pavement Children." Johnson insisted on it being called Street Children. Not content with merely captioning the photographs in a standard, factual way, Johnson insisted that he knew exactly how each of the children felt because he too knew what it was like to grow up in the streets. The results of his work are astounding. Johnson enters the headspace of each child photographed and brings their inner thoughts to life. Some are touching, some are hilarious, some are downright tragic. An extraordinary large format hardback with a photographic dust jacket.
Used availability for B S Johnson's Street Children