Creating ‘Behind the Shop Facade’
By Jim Grover
A combination of the community's response to the news of Maurice’s death and my ‘pop-up’ exhibition in his shop window, the curtain falling on an incredible 60 years of high street trading, and my own respect, admiration, and affection for this man, crystallised in my mind the need to create a body of work to celebrate his life and his role in the community. And so the idea of a tribute exhibition took shape. But where to start? I had done nothing like this before.
My first step was simply practical; I needed to raise funds to cover the anticipated costs to create and stage an exhibition. I turned to Kickstarter for the first time and thanks to the generosity of some 100 donors raised £8,450 (ahead of my targeted £7,700) before the nerve-jangling 'all or nothing' fund-raising deadline. Little did I know back then how woefully inadequate this budget would prove to be given the unexpected enormity of the project I was set to embark upon. Donations came in unexpected ways: while I was distributing flyers outside Maurice’s shop a passer-by, who didn’t live locally and knew nothing of Maurice, immediately concluded that this ‘community project’ was important and gave me £20 towards the campaign; Lisa sold cushions from Maurice’s window; some people dropped off cash donations in the shop as news spread. Every donation, big or small, was, and is, hugely appreciated.
Raising the funds gave me both momentum and encouragement and also put me firmly ‘on the hook’ to deliver the promised exhibition. So then the real challenge began, of piecing together the life of an 87-year-old man who I had only known for the last few years of his life, who I had never really quizzed, who had no surviving direct family members to answer an ever-expanding list of questions, and who had left a largely empty, decluttered, home above the shop, depleted of six decades of family life there.
As one starting point, I did have around 90 minutes of three invaluable, and now tantalising, audio recordings of Maurice that I had happened to make back in 2016, as well as recollections of photos, magazine extracts, and press clippings that he had kept in his shop drawers and which he had shown me back then...of his sailing, his National Service (but where did he serve it?), a girlfriend (but who was she...and what became of her?), his motorbikes, and his cats.
I appealed for memories and stories from local residents and past and present customers, putting up a huge poster in his shop window, distributing flyers, and using social media and local newspaper coverage. I sought the help of a genealogist who pieced together the extraordinary Dorfman family history, the movement of Maurice’s family across Ukraine, London, Essex, and Australia, and who sourced important archive documents from official records. I scoured on-line databases including The Jewish Chronicle and the British Newspaper Archive and, of course, ‘Googled’ extensively.
I bought books on subjects I had never anticipated being drawn to: on National Service, on Jewish migration, and on East End tailoring in the 1920s and '30s. I sent letters (once mailing a whole Clapham street seeking someone who I thought lived there; alas with no success!) and e-mails to those who I thought might have something to share.
Some letters were sent in blissful ignorance: to someone at an address (and which I was so proud to have finally discovered!) who it turned out had moved abroad decades previously; to a family with the right name but who had no connection whatsoever with Maurice; and to someone of Maurice’s early 1950s National Service era at RAF West Malling who had been buried just the week before. I learned that this sort of detective work is filled with frustration, dead-ends, and ambiguities. But, slowly but surely, my search started to yield ‘gold’.
In the pursuit of memories I decided to ‘cold call’ 59, seemingly hopeful, people listed in Maurice's (very) old telephone books. It was one of the best decisions I made. Most phone numbers (42 of them) were, by now, either discontinued or the phone remained unanswered despite repeated attempts. But my successful calls, which were always received kindly, resulted in invaluable conversations: with someone who had danced and sailed with Maurice in the 1960s…with someone who had worked with him in the '70s in the West End…with someone who had worked for him in Jeannettes in the '80s and '90s…with several who had rented his small shop next door over the decades…and even with the aunt of the daughter of his 1960s girl-friend, now living in the US. Without these, so much of Maurice's story couldn’t have been told; I had struck true seams of gold!
As I discovered more I started to be able to focus my searches: I sought, met and interviewed friends from his old sailing club, and I tracked down and interviewed two ex-servicemen who had served in RAF West Malling in the 1950s.
Tucked away in the numerous drawers and cupboards in the shop, and in a few nooks and crannies in the flat above, I stumbled across various 1960s 'Kodachrome' slides, their boxes covered in dust, a few old family photos (frustratingly absent of any annotations requiring my wife and I to use one of Maurice’s old magnifying glasses to try to figure out who was who!), a handful of 1960s 8mm cine film reels, and even 60 years of financial accounts of the family business (found in a very heavily rusted old filing cabinet in the dark ‘cellar’ behind the shop that only opened with a huge ‘yank’).
Extraordinarily, an old radio play script, written by a now deceased local resident, which was based around the story of Maurice’s family surfaced and was offered to me; whilst a combination of fiction and fact it was nevertheless helpful.
Slowly but surely my collection of memories, stories, notes and memorabilia grew, the gift of over 60 enthusiastic contributors and interviewees. The widespread familiarity of Zoom in our 2021 Covid-ravaged world proved invaluable. Every contribution was helpful; sometimes even a single sentence was 'gold' for me as it filled in a missing piece of my fast-expanding puzzle. I ended up with 140 A4 pages of typed-up interview transcripts along with e-mails and notes; I was blessed with rich content.
And so the final challenges begun. How to convert this wealth of content into a coherent narrative and how to use a combination of imagery (I am a visual story-teller at heart), descriptive narrative, and individual ‘voices’, including his own, to tell Maurice’s story.
In reality this whole project has proved to be more of a curatorial challenge than a photography challenge, requiring me to think hard around what to include (even down to what the still life photographs should contain); how to structure, write and present this vast story; and which of the many ‘voices’ to include and where. I have been hugely helped in this curatorial endeavour by Ruth, my wife, who has brought her independent eyes, her constructive challenge, her creativity, and her aesthetic on how best to present the various tableaux of objects as still lifes.
And now the task is almost complete, or at least as complete as I can make it; there remain some frustrating gaps, especially around Maurice's childhood. It’s been a truly monumental task; a task that has been a huge part of my life for some eighteen months. A task far bigger than I ever anticipated and my budget is well and truly 'blown', but with no regrets! As just one example, at the outset I had reckoned that I just might be able to discover enough about Maurice and his life to fill a 40-page exhibition catalogue...and now there is a 230 page book to accompany the exhibition!
It’s been so humbling, rewarding, and inspiring to have so many people willingly and enthusiastically volunteer their time, share their stories, and help me in this huge endeavour; such is their affection and respect for this man and their desire to help create a fitting tribute. What a wonderful observation on humanity.
I feel sure that my tribute exhibition, to be staged in the heart of Clapham where it belongs, will prove to be a wonderful and heart-warming revelation for those who encountered Maurice over the decades. I hope it will bring the community together and give collective pride of this man and his family, who lived amongst us and humbly made such a difference to so many lives over so many years.
Jim Grover
March 2022