Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper
Tate Collection
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<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/wolfgang-suschitzky-9250" aria-label="More by Wolfgang Suschitzky" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Wolfgang Suschitzky</a>
Charing Cross Road Wyndhams Theatre Commissionaire
Gift Eric and Louise Franck London Collection 2013, accessioned 2018
<p><span>Charing Cross Road, Wyndham's Theatre Commissionaire</span> c.1937 is a black and white photograph taken outside the Wyndham Theatre on Charing Cross Road in London. It features the theatre’s commissionaire at the centre of the composition, in his uniform and peaked hat, helping two women as they get into a waiting vehicle. This is one of a series of photographs that Suschitzky took of life on Charing Cross Road, known for its numerous bookshops, between 1936 and 1938. It was a significant subject for Suschitsky, a point of connection with his family’s history of bookselling in Vienna.</p>
paper print photograph gelatin silver
Charing Cross Road, Wyndham’s Theatre Commissionaire
image: 350 × 291 mm
Gift Eric and Louise Franck London Collection 2013, accessioned 2018
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<i>Charing Cross Road, Wyndham's Theatre Commissionaire</i> c.1937 is a black and white photograph taken outside the Wyndham Theatre on Charing Cross Road in London. It features the theatre’s commissionaire at the centre of the composition, in his uniform and peaked hat, helping two women as they get into a waiting vehicle. This is one of a series of photographs that Suschitzky took of life on Charing Cross Road, known for its numerous bookshops, between 1936 and 1938. It was a significant subject for Suschitsky, a point of connection with his family’s history of bookselling in Vienna.</p>
<p>Suschitsky, who became known as much as a cinematographer and film director as a photographer, was born in Vienna. He was brought up by secular Jewish parents who ran a socialist bookshop and were influential figures in the cultural life of ‘Red Vienna’. Suschitsky trained as a photographer in Vienna, and moved to Holland in 1934 before settling in England in 1935, where he joined his sister Edith Tudor Hart. In 1937 he worked for Strand Films as cameraman on the documentaries <i>Life Begins Again</i> (1942) and <i>Hello! West Indies</i> (1943). He also worked on such films as <i>No Resting Place</i> (1951), <i>Ulysses</i> (1967) and <i>Get Carter</i> (1971). A retrospective of his photographic work, <i>An Exile’s Eye</i>, was held at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, in 2002.</p>
<p>As well as recording the theatre life along this London street, images of books and people absorbed in browsing through books are central to Suschitzky’s Charing Cross Road series. Reading had great significance for Suschitzky, not least because the Austrian Social Democratic Party placed great political emphasis on the book as a symbol of freedoms to be defended. He also documented the lives of the East End poor, as well as the more affluent figures of the West End, and his lifelong interest in social distinction is evident in the contrasts he depicted between them. </p>
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<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>
<i>An Exile’s Eye: The Photography of Wolfgang Suschitzky</i>, exhibition catalogue, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh 2002.</p>
<p>Helen Delaney<br/>January 2015</p>
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2024-01-15T00:00:00
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