The fabric of a life
How a Clapham shopkeeper's story became an extraordinary exhibition
One of the first things you notice when you walk through the doors of Clapham Library is the voice coming up from the lower floor. It’s unusual to hear someone speaking at this volume in a library, but this isn’t the kind of voice that you might want to ‘shush’. It’s a warm voice, one that you can tell is being spoken through a smile.
The voice belongs to Maurice ‘Murray’ Dorfman and it’s coming from the speakers of a Mac computer in the corner of the library’s lower floor, where it marks the culmination of Behind the Shop Facade, a fascinating and touching exhibition that’s been put together by local documentary photographer, Jim Grover.
The shop of the title is Jeannette Fashions, a haberdashery and dressmakers that stood at 20-22 Clapham High Street for over sixty years, and which Maurice was the proprietor of. This is the story of how that shop and its owner came to mean so much to the community of Clapham and the labour of love that it took to weave together the fragments of one man’s life story.
“I just started chatting with him…”
“I first met Maurice back in 2016, when I was doing a story about Clapham High Street,” Jim tells us over Zoom when we ask him how his fascination with Jeannette Fashions began.
“I was sort of wandering in to shops that looked interesting and there was Jeannette Fashions. It had this wonderfully fading facade and I just thought, “Wow! What’s behind this door?” So I went in. It was an evening, and there was this little tinkle from the shop bell that Maurice had built above the door, and there was jazz playing quietly in the background. The shop was empty and there was that kind of musty smell to it, but right at the back behind a cutting table was this little figure. That was Maurice. I just started chatting with him.”
That initial chat gradually grew into a friendship, and eventually Jim began to take photos of Maurice and his shop and to learn more things about the life of this local character.
“Maurice was in his 80s then,” Jim says now. “He’d been living in that enormous building by himself since 1992, after his dad had died, and I felt a bit sad for him I suppose. So every time I was down there I would drop in to say hello and have a chat. As I got to know him, Maurice started to show me old photographs and faded press clippings that he kept in his shop drawers. One of the luckiest breaks was that I happened to just turn on my iPhone and record a few of our conversations. I wasn’t planning on doing anything with them, I just find recording things helpful. But quite soon after that he got very ill.”
Because Maurice had no family, Jim and a handful of other locals who’d become friends with him over the years visited him in hospital. “I would buy Haagen Dazs from Sainsbury’s and then go into St George’s hospital and feed him ice cream,” Jim remembers.
In February of 2020, Maurice died. He was 87 years old.
“After he died, I put up a bunch of old black and white photos in the window of the shop, along with some colour photos of his woodland burial” Jim says. “Just to communicate the fact that this man who’d been on the high street for 60 years had died. People started to stop and chat with strangers over these images, because they shared this common bond of having been a regular or occasional visitor to Maurice. Back in the 80s and 90s he was the heart of the community and Jeannette Fashions was very important, especially for those women who were either making clothes for themselves or for their families.
“When I saw that happening, I thought I should do more than just put some pictures in the window. So, without any idea what I was setting myself up to do, I set out to raise some money through Kickstarter to cover expenses, and I started to appeal to people who might have memories of Maurice they wanted to share with me. I thought this would be a three month project, but that was 18 months ago!”
A beautiful journey of surprise
Throughout lockdown Jim worked on what he calls “a beautiful journey of surprise”. Taking photographs of Maurice’s shop and the large ‘time capsule’ of a home above it. Discovering old boxes of Kodachrome slides and Cine Film, and ringing every number in Maurice’s old phonebook, until eventually he’d spoken to more than 60 people and collected over 140 pages of interview transcripts.
The next task was to assemble this vast collection of artefacts and research into something that not only made sense but that did some justice to the full and varied life Maurice had lived.
“I hit lucky,” says Grover with a grin, “because Maurice turned out to be a very interesting man. Those who came across him late in his life and felt a touch of sadness for an old man living by himself - they suddenly discovered he had this really full life. I already knew he’d done some sailing because he’d shown me some of those pictures and I knew he liked to dance, because he’d often dance around the shop. But I discovered all these other things. Like he used to be a biker and had this big Harley Davidson! Maurice lived a wonderful life before he became a shopkeeper on Clapham High Street.”
With the help of genealogists, Grover was able to track Maurice’s family history and uncover the story of how his grandparents had arrived in the UK as refugees from Western Ukraine (then part of Russia). “They were escaping the anti-Semitic pogroms of 1902,” says Jim. “That was over a hundred years ago, so there’s an extraordinary poignancy to that.”
While Jim’s work is usually staged in spaces like the OXO Gallery on the South Bank, he knew that this project had to find a home locally, and while Clapham Library may not be your typical white-walled gallery space, the way in which Maurice’s life has been delicately threaded through its rooms seems incredibly fitting.
“If you really want the whole story then we have put together a book,” says Jim. “That’s got 230 pages of interviews and memories, because the images can only tell a part of it. But, ultimately, what I’m most proud of is the exhibition and giving people the experience of walking through this life.
“You’re able to read about Maurice, see these images of him, watch these old films and even hear his voice. It just makes the whole thing come alive, and it becomes a multi-dimensional story. On one level it’s all about Maurice and it’s a celebration of his life, and his role in the community. But it’s also a social history that covers motorbike rallies in the 60s, ballroom dancing, sailing clubs. It’s also a story about the Jewish culture and the family of these Ukrainian refugees. And it’s a story about Clapham, because Maurice lived through six decades of Clapham changing and gentrifying.
“But at the heart of it, it’s about Maurice Dorfman, his life and his role in the community.”
Behind The Shop Facade is at the Clapham Library until 28 May.
]You can see some of the images from the exhibition here.
The book, Behind the Shop Facade: The Life of Maurice Dorfman is available as a limited edition of 300 signed printed copies, priced at £40, or you can purchase a digital copy for £10.
You can see more of Jim’s work on his website.
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