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| Outside No. 10 as it was in 1977. Printed 2018, Adox MCC fibre paper |
Now it's not the greatest shot in the world in terms of composition, light, subject matter or anything trivial like that. I thought it was worth printing as it simply captures an interesting moment in time - that moment being sometime in the summer of 1977,whilst on holiday with my parents. I would have been 14 at the time and that means it would have been taken on my OM-1, which I'd recently acquired. The Olympus pretty much wiped all out my worldly savings from birthday and Christmas money etc built up over the years. My finances recovered pretty quickly, mind you, once I got a Saturday&Holiday job in the photographic department of a local chemist, but that's a story for another time.
The policeman has his sleeves rolled up (it was summer!) and doesn't look too stressed considering he's guarding the offices of the most important person in the country. No Kevlar stab-proof vest, no Taser, no gun - nothing really, apart from his radio.
And then there's the Asian couple standing proudly for their photograph.
Nowadays you can't even enter Downing Street if you're just a regular Joe or Jane - there are huge steel gates at the end where it joins Whitehall. And usually about a dozen anti-terrorist, heavily armed police. You don't really want to hang about there these days - not that would be allowed to anyway.
How times have changed, eh? Ok I was a callow youth back then with nothing much to worry about except the spots on my face and whether or not I would ever be attractive to members of the opposite sex (and that's definitely another story for another day - growing up in the middle of the countryside in the far North West of Ireland with only a brother for company did not make me the world's most confident person in the company of girls) but looking from today's perspective it really does seem like a different world back then. Apart from the Carlos the Jackal, the Bader-Meinhof group and the Entebbe thing there didn’t seem to be too many threats about*. Fast forward to today and - well, things are very different. What the heck happened?
* OK so I missed out the local shenanigans going on at that time - the activities of the Provisional IRA and various opposing groups, but where I lived seemed like the eye of the storm - it was relatively untouched. Relatively.
It is a humorous photo. Sad to think that people can't just walk up to the house anymore and pose for a photo. That said, everywhere seems to be swamped with tourists these days, so perhaps we can't blame Downing Street for putting up barriers.
ReplyDeleteCheers Marcus. And you are right - it is a shame, as it’s an iconic building. It doesn’t sit well with me that these places have to be closed to ‘ordinary’ people, even if I understand why.
DeleteHow cool! I have a sort of similar photo I made from a balcony at the US Capitol -- a view the American public is no longer allowed to take in, in the name of security.
ReplyDeleteThanks Jim. Your shot sounds equally interesting. Like a lot of things, you don’t really notice the day-to-day changes - only when you look back a few years do you realise how different things are today. I guess that has always been the case, and always will. Thankfully photographs are there to remind us of the changes.
DeleteGreat one! I never even bothered to get anywhere near Downing Street the last time I was in London, and just as well I understand...
ReplyDeleteYour story somehow reminds me of the good 80's. I was in the military at the time, and were one of the guys watching over our then King Olav in his Royal Guard. In that "job" we sometimes had to get into the castle itself (OK, I know it's a bit different to your buildings over there... but still, it's what we got in this part of the world) just for everything to look right when he had official visitors coming over from wherever it was in the world. One time we had just finished lining up at the top of the stairs and just before the visitor would come up the stairs and the old King would make his appearance through a huge door to our left, one of my mates took off his parade hat and fished out a camera. He managed to snap one picture, and the Captain who were standing in front of us were probably very close to death by heart attack or something. Everything went well though. He managed to hide away the camera, get his hat in place and get sort of into the line again before the fanfares and stuff took place. But it was a close call... a very close call indeed. And yes, he got in trouble after everything was finished. He was serving a couple of days in the military jail for it, but no one thought of taking his film from the camera. Which was good for him, of course.
Haha your mate had 'cojones' for sure! Nowadays he might get taken out by some trigger-happy goon before he got the camera up to his eyes. A nice memory from the good old days, eh? ;)
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