Paramedic and part-time street photographer Chris Porsz has been training his lens on the good folk of Peterborough for nearly forty years. With the help of his local newspaper Chris recently set about recreating some of the images he took in the early 1980s; and in so doing ended up with the source material for a fantastic new book bringing together this stunning and socially historic collection of photographs.
I've deliberately not captioned these as the book tells the stories behind them (buy it!); just to say that the couple below snapped on the platform at Peterborough station weren't even from Peterborough, but are still together, and, unfortunately, the lad standing in the doorway in the penultimate photo (reminiscent of the Who's Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy) is sadly no longer with us.
Oh, I love this sort of thing, thanks for the info. I wonder why it's so appealing? - I think it's something to do with feeling comforted that we're not alone in our growing older, and a shared warmth in remembering our younger selves. Whatever, it makes me smile.
ReplyDeleteTime lapse for the soul!
DeleteI love then and now photos and read about this particular project on the BBC website a while back, thanks for jogging my memory. Soon after moving to Ipswich in 1975, I wandered around the town and dock area with my camera, ending up with about a dozen shots. One of these days i'll return and try to recreate them.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing Ford Cortinas and Timothy Whites loomed large.
DeleteWorth checking out Irina Werning, an Argentinian photographer who did two projects entitled 'Back to the Future' (the second featuring Billy Bragg's Riff Raff):
ReplyDeletehttp://irinawerning.com/back-to-the-fut/back-to-the-future/
and
http://irinawerning.com/bttf2/back-to-the-future-2-2011/
Thank you James - I spent ages looking at those. They make you think, don't they?
DeleteI really must post the Mr. Musc photos from Totnes; everyone who sees them wishes they too had done the whole timeline height-chart thing.