Easter Sunday

Sunny interlude.

That rarest of events in London, a sunny Sunday, brings out the crowds. And while these images were snapped at a park parade on Easter Sunday in 1976. the watchers were of greater interest than the paraders.





The three wheeler is an Invacar, a vehicle designed for invalids. Horribly unsafe, it probably created more invalids than it accepted.




Leica M3, 35mm Summaron, 50mm Summicron, TriX ‘scanned’ with the Nikon D800.

Battersea Power Station

Though completed in 1935, Battersea Power Station on the south bank of London’s Thames very much adheres to the high Victorian dictates of English architecture. Large, foreboding, massive, lugubrious, overpowering and anything but welcoming, it was decommissioned in 1975, just a few months before these images were taken in March, 1976.





The forces that be wrangled for almost four decades (!) about how to redevelop the site which is now a high end shopping and residential location. Needless to add, it was sold to foreign investors like pretty much everything else in today’s England.

Nikon F, 28mm Vivitar, TriX, ‘scanned’ with the Nikon D800.

The V&A

Theft central.

Dating from 1852, the Victoria and Albert Museum in west London houses what may be the greatest collection of stolen arts and crafts in the western hemisphere. The English excuse this act of plunder as ‘Colonialism’. I call it theft. The colonies are now gone but the V&A remains.

Still, morals apart, there was always something of interest to be found there when these images were snapped in October, 1975.


Oy! Hands off!


Cleaning ladies. Perfectly coiffed and most charming.


Workers’ break.


Snooze.


On guard.


Tapestry.


Looking down.


Expert at work.


Runner

Nikon F, 28mm Vivitar, TriX, ‘scanned’ with the Nikon D800.

Fire!

Nothing like a good blaze.

A fire is guaranteed to bring out the pyromaniac in all of us, even though few carry matches. There’s something irresistible about watching a good blaze. This one was in a clothing store on Kensington High Street in October, 1975:











Leica M3, 35mm Summaron, 50mm Summicron, 90mm Elmar, TriX ‘scanned’ on the Nikon D800.

Biba

Last days for the trendy.

You can read the sad story of hubris that was the Biba boutique here. What was a trendy small boutique clothing store selling cheap schlocky fashion over-expanded into huge former department store premises on Kensington High Street and went spectacularly bust a couple of years later.

It was so dark in there you could barely make anything out, which seemed to me to deny the first rule of retail: Show the merchandise.

This was the first roll of TriX in my newly acquired Nikon F. This was a true beater, very much on its last legs, acquired for all of £50, but the charisma of the bruised, battered and worn body got me through the day, paired with a half decent Vivitar 28mm f/1.9 lens which was actually not half bad at full aperture, which is how these snaps were made in September, 1975.


Goods were strewn all over the place with zero sense of order.


Children’s play area – a great use of high priced retail space.


The George Best** look.


The theft here in the gloom was alone enough to put the place under.


Mannequins galore.


Soon to be no more

** George Best was a drunken lout of an Irishman who was also the best attacking footballer of his time, playing for Manchester United, then the best club. He died of alcoholism, aged 39, in 2005.

Nikon F, 28mm f/1.9 Vivitar at full aperture, Tri X, ‘scanned’ on the Nikon D800. I sure could have used modern ISOs in this settting!