Maroon Vagabondage: Blaenavon

Comprising of three photographic prints, Leah Gordon’s ‘Kingdom of this World: Triptych’ offers a nuanced perspective on the intertwined histories of slavery, rebellion, abolitionism, seafaring, class struggle and industrialisation throughout the Atlantic world. This photograph is the left-hand print in the triptych. It was taken in 2019 and is based on an illustration from John Thomas Smith's ‘Vagabondiana’, published in 1816 (again, a copy of this publication is the Caird Library, PBH9916). The book is a compendium of illustrated biographies of well-known beggars, buskers and peddlers in London. Smith’s stated aim was to capture an aspect of urban life that was rapidly vanishing due to the state’s campaign to move impoverished individuals off the streets and into workhouses. The result is a unique account of people whose stories would otherwise never have been recorded.

Gordon refers to one of the most famous images in the book, a depiction of black sailor Joseph Johnson. Johnson became a street entertainer after injury ended his career as a merchant sailor and he did not receive a pension. He was famous around London for wearing a hat adorned with a ship model. Smith’s representation of Johnson has more humanity than many printed caricatures of the time, but it nevertheless draws upon racist stereotypes. It is an important visual source for public attitudes towards black people and racial difference in Britain during the decades immediately following the passage of the Slave Trade Act 1807, which abolished slavery in the British Empire.

Gordon created two images based on Smith’s portrait, juxtaposing Johnson’s experiences in early 19th-century London with other historical developments happening at the same time. In this photograph, a white man poses at Blaenavon Ironworks in Wales. This site was responsible for producing much of the iron that underpinned the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Through this setting, Gordon highlights significant social and economic shifts in 19th-century Britain, which saw beggars like Johnson increasingly forced into factory labour or industrial work.

Gordon’s other restaging of Smith’s portrait of Johnson depicts a black man in front of the Citadelle Laferrière in Haiti. It is the left-hand image in ‘Kingdom of this World: Triptych’ (ZBA9836.1). The central image in the triptych is ‘Europe supported by Africa and the Americas: A Prophesy’ (ZBA9836.2), based on one of William Blake’s illustrations for John Gabriel Stedman's ‘Narrative of a five years expedition against the revolted Negroes of Surinam’, published in 1796.