“If you’d said to me 18 months ago that I was going to spend the next 18 months exploring the life of this remarkable man, I would have said you were crazy”.
But photographer Jim Grover, fuelled by an insatiable curiosity to discover more, did continue to explore. The result is a unique photojournalism project which will be open to the public at Clapham Library from today until the end of the month. The subject, Grover acknowledges, would have been “extremely surprised” to find himself the focus of such attention.
The “remarkable man” was Maurice Dorfman, sometimes known as Murray, whom Grover first encountered in 2016, standing in the doorway of his haberdashery shop, Jeannette Fashions, a fixture on Clapham High Street.
The shop spoke evocatively of times past, a treasure trove of faded Butterick and Vogue dress patterns and haberdashery minutiae, of crewel needles and embroidery frames, of clips and buttons and hooks and eyes, and esoteric tailoring aids whose use had long been forgotten.
But Grover was gripped — perhaps by the very ordinariness of Dorfman, who turned out to have had an extraordinary life. He died in February 2020, aged 87; and Grover discovered rich and unexpected seams in Dorfman’s background.
He had not expected, for example, to find that Dorfman was renowned as a champion in sailing, winning many trophies and medals; or that he was once a passionate motorbiker and ballroom dancer.
"Remarkable man": Maurice Dorfman inside Jeannette Fashions (Jim Grover)
“I was drawn to the amazing shop facade when I first encountered Murray in 2016, when I was taking photos for a project called 48 Hours on Clapham High Street.” Dorfman, says Grover, was distinctly unimpressed by the idea — “It’s only a high street!” — but the photographer was intrigued by the old man and made a point of dropping in for a chat every time he was in the neighbourhood.
“As I got to know him, he opened up and told me more things about his life”, says Grover. But by the end of 2019 Dorfman was very ill, and four of us took turns in sitting with him and keeping him company. He had never married and had no direct family, he was living in this huge building [above the shop premises] completely by himself. He died just before Covid, which I think was a blessing because he would have absolutely hated having to shut the shop. Opening the shop was his way of keeping connected, talking to the local community.”
After Dorfman’s death Grover put big prints of him in Jeannette Fashions’ window, together with a note telling people that he had died. “And then people who had bought dress patterns from him started gathering in front of this pop-up exhibition, and sharing their memories of Maurice Dorfman”.
Grover thought, “There’s something more here.” After interviewing more than 60 people in the last 18 months, he has pieced together the “jigsaw puzzle” of Dorfman’s life, tracing it from his family origins in Ukraine, to his parents setting up the fashion business, and his work as a master pattern cutter which was the hallmark of the shop for decades.
In his research process Grover learned a great deal about the Jewish community — with which he was not familiar — and the twin strains of tailoring and finance which ran through the Dorfman family. (Sir Lloyd Dorfman, of Travelex and National Theatre fame, is a descendant of another branch of the family.)
“The more I dug, the more I found”, says Grover, “because so many people were so thrilled that this remarkable man was going to be celebrated like this”. The result is a nearly 300-page book which can be bought at the exhibition or is available online.
Truly, this is the man on the Clapham omnibus — the catch-all tabloid phrase for Mr Everyman — has been brought gloriously to life.
Behind the Shop Facade, runs at Clapham Public Library, 91 Clapham High Street, from April 1- May 28
