Portobello Road, Notting Hill, April 1987 Peter Marshall
In a later post I’ll write about the problems I had in finding this image in my rather large collection. It’s a picture I took in the 1980s in Notting Hill, on a weekday in the market along the Portobello Road. There were two men – a trumpeter who you see – just about – in the middle of this picture, and hidden to his right, a saxophonist. Between them a music stand with some music neither was looking at, on the floor their instrument cases, one open for donations from the passing crowds, and a fairly small radio-cassette playing providing some backing.
They were playing outside a pub, and I stood for a while listening – they were good, but the first three frames I took of them were rather ordinary. They showed the scene, but it was somehow a little empty despite the people. I moved slightly closer and put the trumpet player in the centre of the frame, taking a slightly lower viewpoint. Fortunately he was getting more into his solo, pointing his horn down to the ground (I don’t think he had noticed me, but he could have been posing for the camera) and I took two more frames as people walked between us.
This is the one I like most, partly because while the child at left seems to be dancing to the music his mother (I presume) appears to be grimly ignoring it. It gets the feeling of the music playing and a crowd walking past. Lots of hands and arms and gesture. I like too the contrast between the suits of the two men in the right foreground, and the really tight framing of the trumpeter, almost hidden. The next frame showed him more clearly, and contrasted nicely the indifference a man and a woman walking past with his intensity, but lacked the complexity of this image.
I hadn’t gone to photograph the market, but had been working on a project photographing the buildings of London, and just happened to walk through the street. The pictures were taken on an Olympus SLR, probably with the 35mm f2.8 shift lens I used most of the time. I was also taking colour images on a second Olympus body, and here’s one from Talbot Rd, not far away, probably taken on the same day.
Tailor’s window. TalbotRd, NottingHill. 1987 Peter Marshall
