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London in the 1980’s

I lived in London in the 1980’s. I loved the culture — it suited me — and it’s where I first picked up a camera (see Me and Photography). But back then London wasn’t the shiny modern city it is now — it was a decrepit, broken dystopia where almost nothing worked properly, where Dickensian beggars with incomprehensible accents loomed in the shadows, a place of peeling stained concrete walls, dirty cracked windows, uncollected garbage on the footpaths (sidewalks), instant coffee and bangers and mash in the cafes, endless queues (lines) in the supermarkets, a phone system that never seemed to work, coin-in-the-slot electricity boxes for apartments, etc. You could still see unrepaired World War II bomb damage here and there in the City and West End.

These are some of the first photos I ever took. They’re really photos from another world — virtually none of the places shown here exists any more; and if they do, they don’t look anything like this now. I’m glad I captured some of this London before it disappeared forever — but I can’t say I’m nostalgic for what the photos show. London could be a grindingly hard and poverty-stricken place to live or work in back then (it certainly was for me, at least for a while).

See also my Under London: Photos of London Underground in the 1980’s gallery for a more extensive and focused view of a different slice of that same London in the 1980’s.