ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the photographic representation of a range of residential institutions within a collection of early twentieth-century writings, Living London: Its Work and its Play, its Humour and its Pathos, its Sights and its Scenes, edited by George Robert Sims and published by Cassell & Company between 1902 and 1903. In keeping with Sims's aim to capture 'every phase of London life', and in contrast to the spatial and aesthetic emphasis of architectural photography, most of Living London's images of institutional interiors are populated. Living London's photographs suggest that domestic ideals, expressed in generic and site-specific visual, material and spatial forms, also informed the design and representation of institutional interiors. The ideological relationship between privacy and respectability is visually inscribed in a Living London image, which depicts the interior of a couple's lodging house in Spitalfields. Living London's photographs and descriptions of sleeping environments draw attention to a more general feature of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century urban development.
