décollage

"I defy any

excit

"This im

WORMS OR DIE

& 

and

Milk From An Ear

FUN

Gardens St.

ion of    of

Buha

nite

ET STREE

Surviving words (complete and incomplete) within scenes from my series of photographs of ripped away billposter décollage, taken 25 years ago...

Carole and The Sweet

It's my sister Carole's 52nd birthday tomorrow, so why not commemorate the day with this sweet photograph that I took of her back in the early 1970's?

My hunch is that it's 1973,  and she was still really into her glam-pop phase of loving The Sweet - especially Brian Connolly, the band's lead singer (who died in 1997).

The snap was taken with my Pocket Instamatic camera which used 110 mm film. As it's from the end of a negative strip, the developers didn't send me back a print of this image - most probably because the colouring had distorted. But thanks to modern day scanners  - I've just discovered the photograph after 40 years or so.

Following on from my post Our World 1967 from July of last year, the added charm of this picture is that it's taken in the home, and captures the decor of Carole's world at a moment in time. It's almost all Brian and The Sweet, though wholesome Donny O gets a look-in too. I'm certain that these same images were plastered over bedroom walls across the nation at this time. The pin-up of Brian at the top right of the photo was the centrespread of an issue of Popswop, a highly popular music magazine which she got every week (until it merged with the Record Mirror newspaper in 1974).

hAPPY bIRTHDAY Carole!

I remember the red fuzzy felt name sign on the door!

Charity Collection Statue

A 35mm transparency that I'd taken sometime in the mid 1980s. It's a close-up image of one of those ubiquitous charity collection statues that stand outside chemist shops. I cannot recall in which street it was taken - but I do remember going through a phase of photographing the world through a 'fisheye' lens that I'd borrowed from a friend. 

I wonder how much money this rather sad-looking lad collected for charity during his lifetime of being stared at in all weathers by the passing show?

A street without passers-by, and no-one to play with...