Another London

Yet another long overdue post to bookmark a wonderful photography exhibition that Andy and I visited some weeks ago. Another London focused on photographs taken by well known visiting photographers between 1930 and 1980.

All of the photos were in black and white and captured simple moments in a London filled with transition from two wars, two major cultural revolutions...Hippie and Punk......I am using the Tates text below.....

"For these artists London was a foreign city, which they either visited briefly or settled in permanently, and they recorded and represented it in their own unique style and distinctive ways. Emblems of Britishness which might have been familiar to visitors such as pearly kings, red buses and bowler hats are documented alongside the urban poor surviving life in the city as pavement artists, beggars and buskers."

The special part for me is the realization that I was seeing the London my parents knew....the London I knew as a small child visiting my Grandmother in Kensington......something familiar yet long gone.......

I remember being awestruck by the vibrance of the late sixties....the Biba fashions...the wide eyed makeup...pale pink lips....the extravagant cars.....the rush of life.....the individualism which was embraced by the young and daring.....I am so lucky to have brushed life at this time!