Domeland. Text Owen Hatherley, photos David Secombe (1/5)
Posted: May 9, 2011 Filed under: Architectural, The Thames | Tags: Greenwich Peninsula, Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, Owen Hatherley Comments Off on Domeland. Text Owen Hatherley, photos David Secombe (1/5)
The Dome under construction, seen from Bugsby’s Reach. Photo © David Secombe 1997.
From A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain*, Owen Hatherley, 2010:
As recently as fifteen years ago, this place was called Bugsby’s Marshes. Downriver from Greenwich, with its baroque masterpieces and gift shops, a moonscape of blasted, smoking industry: the largest gasworks in the world, an internal railway ferrying goods and effluent from the river out to the suburbs, and a catalogue if toxic waste, known from the early nineteenth century as an area of ‘corrosive vapours’, something only added to by the autogeddon of the Blackwall Tunnel which sweeps a roaring fleet of cars under the Thames at rush hour.
In the post-industrial city, what we do with these places, with their memories of the grotesque mutations that ushered in its industrial precursor (after moving production out to China), is to clean them up and make them safe for property-owning democracy. Accordingly, by the 1990s this by now unproductive wasteland was ready for redevelopment, after a mammoth decontamination effort. Just over the river is an example of what this could have been like, the Canary Wharf development on the Isle of Dogs, where dead industry was rebranded in the 1980s as the ‘Docklands Enterprise Zone’. Architecturally, it was given the treatment pioneered in New York’s post-industrial Battery Park, a postmodernist simulation of a metropolis that never truly existed, populated by banks and newspapers. It even used the same architect, Cesar Pelli. Yet after the early 1990s recession, perhaps this as considered rather foolhardy for the Peninsula: at this point Docklands’ Stadtkrone at Canary Wharf (‘Thatcher’s Cock’ as it was nicknamed)was an empty, melancholic monument to neoliberal hubris, as opposed to today’s rapaciously successful second City of London. Something else had to be done: the ‘entertainment’ variant of the same schema swung into operation.
* published by Verso. © Owen Hatherley 2011.
See also: Flotsam and jetsam no. 5
Welcoming smiles … (3/3)
Posted: May 6, 2011 Filed under: London Music, London Places, London Types | Tags: Dave Hendley, Travellers, Westway Comments Off on Welcoming smiles … (3/3)
Travellers’ community, Westway. Photo © Dave Hendley 1972.
Dave Hendley writes:
The picture was made one Saturday in the late summer of 1972 at the other end of my working life and in a very different world. I was on a job for Time Out and the mission was to photograph a free music festival in what was then a grassed area under the Westway by Latimer Road. My brief was to photograph stock pictures of musicians for future inclusion in the magazine’s gig guides. The concert was a small and very comfy affair with an audience of around 150 – 200 people.
A short distance away, under what is now the West Cross interchange, there was a cluster of caravans and I spotted a group of traveller men-folk observing the event with curiosity and great amusement.
I wandered over and asked to take a photograph. These were times when being photographed was something of a compliment and the lads posed willingly. I suspect in today’s suspicious climate I would have met with a more hostile reaction. I took just two frames as was my normal procedure back then, film was a precious commodity and consequently I always shot very concisely. After all why would you want more than one or two shots of a particular subject?
Later in the afternoon the Time Out picture editor Rebecca John (the granddaughter of the painter Augustus John) came to say hello and I abandoned my duties for a visit to a nearby pub. Rebecca was a very lovely person and it is is one of my great regrets that we subsequently lost touch over the years.
I returned to photograph a few more bands, including a musician called Steve Hillage, a strange hippie type in a pixie hat. As I was shooting away a scruffy but very polite and gently spoken young man approached me and enquired if he could buy some pictures. He wrote his name, Richard, and contact details on the back of a crumpled flyer. On the following Monday I made my way to the Virgin shop in Notting Hill Gate where I sold Richard Branson a couple of frames for a tenner.
© Dave Hendley 2011
Welcoming smiles … (2/3)
Posted: May 4, 2011 Filed under: Health and welfare, Shops | Tags: English teeth Comments Off on Welcoming smiles … (2/3)
Shop window, Lewisham. © David Secombe 1997
From The British Dental Journal, 24 June 2006:
Londoners too busy to brush teeth
The hustle and bustle of city life may be causing Londoners to neglect their teeth, according to a survey conducted by the British Dental Health Foundation and HealthSure.
The National Dental Survey found that one in three people living in London admitted to never brushing their teeth for long enough, and this statistic was three times higher in London than in some places in the country and almost twice as high as the national average.
Dr Nigel Carter, chief executive of the British Dental Health Foundation, commented, “It is very worrying to think that people in London are struggling to even find the time to brush their teeth properly.”
In the survey, only 11% of people in Southampton usually brushed for less than two minutes while other scores were: Newcastle (23%), Cambridge (20%), Manchester (14%), Cardiff (14%), Bristol (14%), Belfast (15%), Nottingham (18%) and Edinburgh (24%).
Welcoming smiles … (1/3)
Posted: May 4, 2011 Filed under: Eating places, London Types, Public Announcements Comments Off on Welcoming smiles … (1/3)
Belgo, Camden. © David Secombe 1992
From Gumtree, 27th February 2010:
French waiter is looking for a summer job …
hi my name is jean, i’ll be graduated in france at the end for may. i need for my job to practis my english. i’m totally able to speak with english guest and anderstand what they need. …
David Secombe writes:
Welcome to the London Column. This site is dedicated to photography and writing from London.
The site is edited by myself and will feature contributions from some of the best writers and photographers from the past sixty years.
Now read on …
The London Column 