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...

This is the Greatest...

No.1: The (media) Edit

This classic sketch, in trad parlance, "tells it like it is". I've not been able to source the first time it was created - but plenty of versions of this illustration have come and gone over the years. Even in our post-film digital landscape, the scissors remain the symbol of the edit...

c.1985

c.1994

Op Art

Deep within the pages of the October 1965 issue of the classic Rave Magazine (Where it's all happening!) there's a quarter length advert for "fantabulous" Op-Art Brooches. There were three different designs to choose from, each with a so-very-'65 name: The Who, The Trend, The Help.

The Op Art bandwagon had been well and truly jumped on following the impact of Bridget Riley's work in the early 60s, and it was fifty years ago in 1964 when Time Magazine (who would later coin the term 'Swinging London') dubbed the hip new art movement that was happening on both sides of the Atlantic as 'Op Art'.

'Pictures That Attack The Eye': Time Magazine October 23rd 1964

Op of the Charts - October 1965

I.O.U.

The Big Jig

A company called Good-Win produced a series of budget-priced cardboard jigsaw puzzles of Famous London Scenes - most likely during the mid to late 1950s. There were two sets - the first were numbered 1-4 (Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, Thames Embankment, Tower Bridge) and the second set were numbered 5-8. The latter being of rather more interest as they all depicted London Markets.

No.6 is Covent Garden Market. It's the only example of the Market Series that I've come across so far. The illustration is a bit rough and ready, though it does capture a flavour of a bustling morning with fruit, vegetables and flowers being carted around the crowded streets. 

It's likely that piles of boxes of The Big Jig jigsaws ended up on stalls down Petticoat Lane Market once their shop shelf-life days were over. I wonder how many of the Series 8 puzzle (Petticoat Lane) still survive intact today?