Month: April 2019

Continuing the series of posts showing work taken in London in 1979 as posted to Facebook with comments an image at a time in the first half of 2018.

Previous post in London 1979 series
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London Photographs 1979 – Peter Marshall

River Thames, Twickenham, Richmond, 1979
18s-54: richmond, river, trees, boat

Another picture from the same walk in Twickenham, with branches and their reflections combining to form a screen through which we appear to see the river and the moored boats at the top of the picture. Its an image which plays with space in a way that interested me, and which I still find difficult to resolve.

Hammerton’s ferry across the Thames to Ham still runs from a jetty not far from where I made this picture in Orleans Gardens.

River Thames flooding at Twickenham, Richmond, 1979
18s-63: richmond, river thames, flood, pub, pub sign, White Swan, dog

Earlier on that same walk we had passed the beer garden of the White Swan, usually on the river bank but now a part of it, and this is another of the several pictures I took there, opposite the end of Eel Pie Island, where a boat is moored. Although I think much of the flood water was probably from melting snow, you can still see snow on the ground across on the other bank of the Thames.

The river here is still tidal, and flooding at high spring tides isn’t unusual. I took a number of frames here, of which I think this is probably the best.

Twickenham Ferry, River Thames flooding at Twickenham, Richmond, 1979
18s-65: river thames, flooding, ferry, road sign, boy, boat

Twickenham Ferry, River Thames flooding at Twickenham, Richmond, 1979
18s-66: river thames, flooding, ferry, road sign, boat

There have been several ferries at Twickenham, the subject over the years of great rivalry and court cases. The oldest record is of Dysart’s Ferry, licensed by the family which owned Ham House, known to have been in existence in 1652 when it was prohibited from running after sunset by the Privy Council, but thought to be much older, dating from the reign of King John

The Dysart family managed to close down rivals which opened up until 1908, when the Earl of Dysart lost a court case against Hammertons ferry, in a case that went the whole way up to the House of Lords. Victory for the ‘The Ferry to Fairyland‘ was commemorated in song, one of a number written about Twickenham’s ferries. The rivals continued in operation until around 1970 when the old ferry, which had been sold to a private operator when the National Trust took over Ham House ceased operation, again at least in part over a long legal battle, this time over its use of the slipway. There was a long legal battle and the owners of the property at left put up the signs on their fence ‘This Slipway Is Private Property’. I don’t know what the outcome of the court cases was, though I think the public (and ferry) had used the slipway for many years, but of course the appropriation of the commons for private use has always been one of the basic aims of our legal system. The old Twickenham ferry was the one I went across as a child to visit Ham House, rowed I am fairly sure by the man who appears in a fine photograph on the Historic England site, and it ran from this slipway close to the White Swan.

Hammertons ferry, which runs from a jetty around a quarter mile downstream still operates during the summer and at winter weekends, and has an active Facebook page which includes interesting posts, pictures and videos about the river and the tides, which still trap many careless drivers parking in the area. This ferry is still a good way to visit Ham House though now a little closer to St Margarets than Twickenham station and with a few yards to walk on the opposite bank.

Denise Artistic Florist, Vauxhall, Lambeth 1979
18u-12: shop, florist,

I can’t place the exact location of ‘Denise Artistic Florist’, though the few frames immediately prior were taken inside an empty area on the Thames immediately east of Vauxhall Bridge. Four years later that site as bought by developer Regalian. Terry Farrell won a competition to develop it, and his architectural folly was bought by Margaret Thatcher as the HQ for the Secret Intelligence Service MI6. Apparently we only see half the building which has huge facilities underground – and possibly even a secret passage to Westminster.

It seems odd to have such a flamboyant front for our secret intelligence service, and I rather feel it would have been better to have kept something like Denise as a front, with our agents emerging carrying bunches of flowers.

But if anyone bought the Freehold Premises which were for sale from Douglas Young and Company, I suspect it was to knock them down and build something new.

River wall, River Thames, Vauxhall, Lambeth 1979
18u-24: riverside

This was the derelict site next to Vauxhall Bridge now occupied by MI6, but then a playground for kids, and with some evidence of adult nocturnal activity scattered liberally around. At right is Camelford House, designed by TP Bennett and built in 1960 for the General Post Office’s Telecommunications regional head office. Both it and the neighbouring Tintagel House built at the same time for the Metropolitan Police are among the better examples of their time, though that isn’t saying a lot. Camelford House now houses a wide variety of organisations.

The concrete river wall was to the slipway which still exists and down which the London ‘Duck’ tours by amphibious vehicles enter and leave the river until the service was stopped to build the super-sewer project.

Closed shop awaiting demolition, Vauxhall, Lambeth 1979
18u-32: shop, demolition, Millett’s, newsagent,

Millett’s Newsagent & Tobacconist was at 111 Tyers St Vauxhall close to the Lambeth City Farm.

Kenneth Cecil Millett had owned a number of businesses, including the “Wash Me Clean” Launderette at 1, Jonothan Street, SE11 a newsagents at 11-13 Stratton Ground, SW1, and newagents and tobacconists like this also at 20 Vauxhall Street, SE11, 50 Trinity Road, SW17, 7 Wilcase Road, SW8, 342 Kennington Lane, SE11 and 44-46 Wood Street, Kingston-upon-Thames (also an off-licence) but in 1976 filed for receivership.

The shop on the corner of St Ostwald’s Place, has now been replaced by a modern 4-storey block of unusual design.

Closed shop awaiting auction, Vauxhall, Lambeth 1979
18u-33: shop, J C Norton, shoe repairs,

J C Norton’s for High Class Boot & Shoe Repairs was at 119-121 Tyers Place, close to the Vauxhall City Farm.

I don’t know how much the shop raised at auction, but rather to my surprise my original caption suggesting demoliton was over-pessimistic and the building is still there, though not too easy to recognise following extensive rebuilding and extension.

The building has different first floor windows, and extra story, and the ground floor frontage has changed, with the door in the different place. The house is at a slight bend in the street and retains the horizontal bands at the top of the wall above the first floor, with the second floor being set back behind this parapet.

More to follow shortly

Previous post in London 1979 series

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The pictures in this series of posts are exactly those on London Photographs, where landscape format images display slightly larger. Clicking on any picture will go to the page with it on the web site.

I have included the file number and some keywords in the captions; you can order a print of any picture on this site using the file number.
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There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

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I’m glad that someone has read the EU’s latest set of amendments recently approved by the European Parliament on the proposals on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market, because, quite frankly I find it quite impossible going. Should you wish to try it is available online here. The press release is more understandable.

Of course we have no idea at the moment whether we will be in or out of the EU  in a week’s time , or in a year’s time or the two years within which the proposals will be implemented by EU member governments. And quite possibly even if we do get out of the EU, our government will still implement some or all of the proposals.

One change that I personally would welcome, though it will have no effect on living photographers come in Article 14, which is actually reasonably clear about the status of reproductions of works of visual art in the public domain.  When I wrote a whole series of articles about nineteenth and early 20th century photography some years ago, it was always annoying not to be able to use illustrations of photographs that were in the public domain, but which various bodies claimed copyright.

The proposed change – or rather clarification – has been welcomed by Art Historian, as Art History News makes clear, though of course unless or until it becomes incorporated into UK law, organisations such as the National Gallery and The Tate and other museums will probably continue to claim copyright and charge fees despite their European counterparts having abandoned the practice.

Copyright was originally intended to protect those who produced ‘artistic’ works, and effectively outlaws the argument that there can be a new copyright in a photograph of an exisiting work or art which is in the public domain – here it is in Article 14:

Member States shall provide that, when the term of protection of a work of visual art has expired, any material resulting from an act of reproduction of that work is not subject to copyright or related rights, unless the material resulting from that act of reproduction is original in the sense that it is the author’s own intellectual creation.

The rest of the document seems to have generally received a cautious welcome from photographers and photographer’s groups, as you can see on the European Federation of Journalists site. For a more euphoric view see The famous Copyright Directive explained and how it can save photography and journalism, and it’s also worth looking at Wikipedia’s reservations in ‘We do not support the EU Copyright Directive in its current form. Here’s why you shouldn’t either’.

Of course for working photographers the major problem is not in the actual law on copyright, but in enforcing it. It takes some work to identify unauthorised usage of images – and few agencies who are happy to take a large slice from images currently take any proactive role in trying to reclaim what could be a significant source of income for them.

There are companies which offer such services, but while these may be viable for photographers who produce a relatively small number of highly popular images, the fees that they charge suggest to me that they have little faith in their own ability to identify abuse and recover payments. And while some photographers have done very well out of doing so, I think many of use have found it time-consuming and with little return.

We’d seen the odd bear on our walks around Berlin, and I think at least one appears in my earlier posts, but on our last evening in Berlin we went to visit what seemed to be Bear Central, better known to the residents of the city as Ku’damm.

Kurfürstendamm is a long street lined with the kind of shops I would never dream of going into, but I ddin’t have to worry as most of them were shut by the time we arrived. During the day it’s a Hell of consumerdom, but at night it was just a rather dull street where nothing much was happening, though there were just a few bars open.

Back in the 1920s and 30s, this was the centre of Berlin’s nightlife, brought to an end by the Great Depression and the rise of Hitler and finally buried under a street full of broken glass on Kristallnacht, 9-10 November 1938. It was seeing photographs of this earlier in the day at the Topography of Terror museum on Niederkirchnerstrasse that had promnpted us to make our journey to see the street today.

When much of the centre of Berlin was in East Germany after the war and particularly after the building of the wall, Ku’damm flourished as something of a showcase of the West, but with reunification, the nightlife shifted to the former eastern zone.

Apparently nobody knows why the bear became a symbol of the city of Berlin; it put in its first appearance in 1280, but it was really in the 19th century it bcame fully esablished as Berlin’s mascot. At the end of that century there were several hundred of varous shapes and sizes visible in the city and in 1920 Greater Berlin’s coat of arms incorporated a large standing bear similar to that later used by East and West Berlin and the united city since.

The bears we met on Ku’damm were the Buddy Bears, introduced by two Greman artists who, ionpsired by ‘cow parades’ in New York and Zurich put 350 bears on the streets of Berlin in 2001, which were later auctioned for charity. Next year came the United Buddy Bears, with its arms upstretched in a gesture of friendliness and optimism, standing in a circle around the Brandenburg Gate in 2002. Since then they have toured the world. There are around 140 of them, each painted to represent one of the world’s countries, and in July 2011 they were back in Berlin for the summer before travelling on. The bears still make money for charity, although the exhibitions are always free, as new bears are often produced for countries and those they replace auctioned off, and by October 2018, according to Wkikpedia, had made 2.3m euros for UNICEF and local organisations helping children in need.

It was quite dark in the area where the bears were displayed, and my Fuji 100X had some difficulties in coping, and I didn’t like to go above ISO1600. Most were taken with the lens fairly wide open and a few don’t have quite enough depth of field for what I was trying to do. But the real problem was that they were mainly standing with their backs to well lit windows of the closed shops, with very little light on their faces. It was a situation where some fill-in light would have helped greatly and I had no flash or other light source with me. But those I’ve included here are just a few of those that I took which were reasonably succesfull. After a while, bears get a bit boring.

Others were posing with the bears for photographs

This was the last day of our stay in Berlin. The following morning we tidied up the flat and then took the bus to the airport for the flight back into Heathrow. I took a few pictures on the journey, but nothing of real interest. We got a good view of central London as we came into land, but the window wasn’t really clean enough for them to be useful.

Previous Berlin post

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There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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Denkmal für die Ermordeten Juden Europas — a Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, designed by architect Peter Eisenman and engineer Buro Happold commemorates the six million murdered Jews, victims of the Holocaust. Three million of their names are listed and read out loud in an underground information centre below the site.

There are 2,711 concrete slabs or “stelae”, each 2.38 by 0.95m, and with varying heights from 0.2 to 4.7 metres, in long rows with walkways between in which you become overwhemlmed by the grey slabs as you walk further along each line. They get less regular as you walk further in, and some seem unfinished – and the massive concrete in some cracked up a year of two of the mouument being opened in 2005.

I found it a powerful experience, obviously resemembling a cemetery with the blocks as coffins or graves, and the light and shade on the grey blocks and your view of the sky – grey clouds while we were there. My photographs I think are rather superficial and fail to really show the depth of the experience. We had little time and the others were keen to get on, and I was rather overwhelmed.

We walked on to look at some of the other familiar monuments of Berlin, including the Brandenburg Gate, used by the Nazis as a party symbol. It was built between 1788 and 1791, commissioned by Frederick William II of Prussia to represent peace, and designed by Carl Gotthard Langhans based on the gateway to the Acropolis, part of his desire to create ‘Athens on the River Spree’.

It was one of few buildings in the area left standing in the area at the end of the war, though damaged. East and West Berlin authorities worked together on its restoration, but the gate, just inside the eastern zone became one of the border crossings, but was closed in 1961 when the Berlin wall was built and did not reopen until December 1989. Since then it has been further restored.

The Marshalls couldn’t leave Berlin without visiting the Marschallbrücke which crosses the Spree close to the various government offices. On the left is the end of the Reichstag Building where the Greman Parliament sits, and beyond it Paul-Löbe-House and across the river the Marie-Elisabeth-Lueders-Haus, the two designed as a unity by architecht Stephan Braunfels and symbolically linking (and there is also a bridge and a tunnel) the two halves of Germany across the Spree.

We walked east beside the river, where I made a picture of the Marschall Bridge and continued east to Freidrichstrasse where I took a quick snap of the remarkable facade of the Admiralspalast Theatre, opened in 1910.

Where is Wei Wei.

We continued east through various back streets, past art and bars.

and eventually found ourselves eating and drinking in Moskwa.

The final episode of our stay in Berlin will come shortly.

Previous Berlin post

______________________________________________________

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________