Islington in Colour: The first of several posts of colour pictures I made in January 1993 in the London Borough of Islington, mostly in Islington itself. All these pictures are in my Flickr album 1993 London Colour and clicking on any image will take you to a larger version there.
I think the first walk on which I took these pictures began at Kings Cross and I walked into Pentonville. I will post them in the order I made them, but I can’t remember the exact location of some of these. Please comment if you recognise where they were.
Mural, Magnus Irvin, 1982, London, 1993, 93c01-01-73
Magnus Irvin, born in 1955, is a prolific public artist and his work includes many murals, but this one is not included in the murals page on his web site. He designed and painted this one in 1982. Perhaps it refers to Joseph Grimaldi who basically invented the clown as we know it and is buried in the area.
This striking post-war brutalist estate was designed Howell, Killick, Partridge & Amis for the Greater London Council and built in 1964-7. As well as photographing it in black and white I made this colour image.
Hairdresser, Islington, 1993, 93c01-01-63
A sign reflected in the window points to Chapel Market and this HIGH CLASS GENTS TOILET SALOON was at No. 114. Few streets in the area have numbers this high.
Demos Modes Ltd, Islington, 1993, 93c01-01-65
This closed shop up for sale was definitely at No.5, but again I cannot remember which road it was on or find any information on Demos Modes Ltd.
Shop Window, Islington, 1993, 93c01-01-66
A dramatic figure in a window display, I think selling crash helmets for motorcyclists. Wearing them had become compulsory in the UK twenty years earlier in 1973.
A mural which leaves you in no doubt about what the business it is advertising offers, but I suspect most of its clients had rather less sporty models.
Mural, School Playground, Islington, 1993, 93c01-01-55
I think this and the picture below are from the same school playground.
Mural, School Playground, Islington, 1993, 93c01-01-42
A mural of rural scenes in a school playground, perhaps reflecting the rural past of the area. There were once watermills on the River Fleet which ran in places along the borough’s western boundary, and certainly farms with sheep and geese, but I think all will have disappeared by the age of the tractor cutting corn.
Christmas Greetings From My Flickr Albums – There are only 17 pictures out of the roughly 30,000 on my Flickr account which have the tag ‘Christmas‘, and some of those are only because I’ve mentioned the festival in my description rather than for anything in the picture. Although I’ve taken many pictures of Santas on the streets of London, almost all of these have been in the last 25 years, and so far I’ve mainly put pictures from earlier times onto Flickr – mostly from 1970-1994 and mainly of London. Wishing you all a happy Christmas. But if you get too fed up with the nonsense on TV or even with family and friends there are plenty of pictures on-line to look at!
Former Cobblers, Hackney Road, Cambridge Heath, Tower Hamlets, 1983 36u-62
I took this in 1983, looking through the window of a cobblers shop which had recently closed but still had posters with the message ‘It wouldn’t be Christmas without Pirelli’. Santa Claus wasn’t entirely the invention of Coca-Cola though his popularity and appearance owes much to their Christmas advertising from the 1930s. The article on the link to Wikipedia above has more about Santa than you will ever want to know. This year I produced a short run of poorly printed versions of this picture as Christmas cards for selected personal friends, mainly photographers. This picture is in my album London 1983 and also appears in Tower Hamlets – Black and White.
Auto-Sparks Ltd, Electric Harness Manufacturers, Wincolmlee, Hull, 1982 33g21
In my Hull Black and White album you can find this picture and the long description below:
An unprepossessing 20th century industrial building on or close to Wincolmlee where electrical harnesses – bundles of cables and connectors – for various makes of cars and other vehicles were made. Apparently Auto-Sparks Ltd Hull dates back to an electrical business founded by Mr Henry Colomb on Beverley Rd in the 1920s. Auto-Sparks Ltd was incorporated in April 1942 and a history page on the web site of its successor company, Autosparks reproduces the original company logo from 1954 when it was registered as a trade mark.
After the original owner and manager retired in the 1980s Auto-Sparks got into difficulties and collapsed in 1991. It was bought and moved to Sandiacre Nottingham by R D Components who were specialists in classic motorbike and car harnesses and they took over the name as Autosparks, and in 2005 became Autosparks Ltd.
This picture was taken in December, and my attention was drawn to the building by the Christmas decorations drawn on its first-floor windows. And by wondering whatever an electric harness was.
The SI unit of electric charge is of course the Coulomb, named after Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, so this electical business founded by Mr Henry Colomb would appear to be a remarkable example of nominative determinism.
Father Christmas, High Rd, Willesden, Brent, 1990, 90-12c-55
In 1990 in Brent I took two Christmas pictures in 1990, one in black and white in the album 1990 London Photos of a Santa holding a number of figures and with a Harrods tag ‘£22’ standing on a box containing a caravan TV aerial kit.
The second picture from 1990 Brent was a café window in colour with Christmas decorations and an advert posted in it for flats to let in Station Road. Also in the window is a poster for Sickle Cell Awareness Day, 15th December 1990, to the left of which you can see part of me reflected as I made the image, along with reflections of a parked van and the shops and flats on the opposite side of the road. This is one of many pictures in my album 1990 London Colour.
Christmas, Car Sales, High St, Norwood, Croydon, 1991, 91-1b-22
From a South London used car showroom in the album 1991 London Photos is a 1987 car with its features and price described in notices on the windscreen complete with Christmas decorations. Usually when photographing interiors through windows I tried to work close to the glass and eliminate reflections so far as possible, but here I deliberately moved the black glove I was wearing to include the church across the road.
Christmas Lights, West End, Westminster, London, 1986, 86c123-32
Pictures at night are so much easier now with digital cameras as you can work with much shorter exposures – this was probably taken on ISO400 film, while now at night I often work and get better results at 4 stops faster – the ISO6400 setting on my camera. Also being able to see what you have taken immediately makes it much easier than having to wait until the film was processed and printed.
In the same albums and taken within a minute or two of the previous picture was this picture of Eros and the advertising display. The clock tells us that I made this at 16.06, around 15 minutes after sunset. Of course Eros isn’t really Eros, but Anteros, designed by Sir Alfred Gilbert to commemorate the philanthropic work of Lord Shaftesbury and called by him ‘The God of Selfless Love‘ – “as opposed to Eros or Cupid, the frivolous tyrant.”
But Piccadilly is a place at Christmas where some like to come and celebrate drunkenly and Anteros needs boarding up for protection and instead of seeing the fountain we see the hoardings with vintage Christmas images and greetings from The London Standard which featured Eros on its masthead.
Finally in 1988 in Shepherds Bush and now the first image in my album 1988 London Colour. This shop was a pet shop and the window is full of Christmas Stockings for cats and dogs and boxes of ‘Good Boy’ treats. Even the scratching post has some green ribbon attached. Along with some rather horrible artificial tree-like objects complete with blue and silver hanging balls. It seemed a particularly bleak image of the capitalist commercialisation of a religious festival.
