black and white photography by rob gardiner.

It has been a summer of long distance holidays, visits to family, and family visits. It is about time I posted some photos. Recently I shot a commission to document Mayfair in London, I thought you might like to see some of the pics that I consider capture the essence of Mayfair. For those not familiar, it is the quintessential square mile of classic London, lots of icons of englishness, old wealth, it is the hang out of the well-to-do. (Shooting with a rangefinder, I usually compose horizontally, but the book calls for mostly portrait aspect. Funny how much that can throw you off balance).

Last Saturday, a herd of sheep was driven through central London streets to assert the ancient historic rights of the Freemen of the City of London. Leading the flock were architects Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano (the Pompidou Centre in Paris is theirs, amongst others). Joining them were a dozen butchers of the Worshipful Company of Butchers. It was all in celebration of the London Architecture Week.

The route (map) took them from the Borough Market to the ancient Smithfield Meat Market via the Millennium Bridge over the Thames and past St Pauls. The butchers were “non-practising” - the sheep were transported back to the farm for killing out of public view.

It was not something you see everyday. Many thousands watched the event along the route. The shepherds spent more time herding us backwards-walking photographers than the 20 odd sheep.

All pictures per usual Leica M6 35/2.0 Tri-X PMK Pyro

Today is Worldwide Pinhole Day. Now in its fifth year, the concept is that pinhole enthusiasts simultaneously take photographs on this specific day and post the results to a central website. Last year it garnered more than 1800 entries. I’m not usually one to join in these activities, but with my recent injury I’ve been missing photography. All manner of pinhole cameras are used on the day, homemade cameras that began life as milk cartons, biscuit tins or even empty beer cans. I set off to re-photograph an old staple. Regulars to the site are surely thoroughly fed up with the reshoots of the Eye, but I find it endlessly fascinating. Shot on a 4x5 pinhole camera loaded with Polaroid 55 film.

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All winter I have been fascinated by construction works on Ironmonger Lane in London, so much so that I ensured it was on my daily walk and I could take in the transformation. Piece by piece the entire lane was stripped down 12 inches by a 5 man team and relaid in shiny bricks that probably came from Spain. An A-Frame information board announced it was a 14 week “Street Improvement Project” and presented a badly photoshopped vision for the future complete with levitating people walking by. It was all very exciting. Without further ado, I present Ironmonger Lane 2006 (top) and Ironmonger Lane 2005 (below).

As you can see, it was worth the wait. No result less than the evidence of a complete waste of several man years of work would have sufficed. The bollards that are now in place were not part of the plan. To the planners, it may have seemed that narrowing the street would prevent the delivery vans from using that appealing ‘SLOW’ car space but it became clear early on that what they had done was create a space on the footpath that appealed even more to the delivery vans. So up came the bricks and in went the bollards.

Ironmonger Lane is part of ancient London, with a 2000 year old Roman road lying beneath. It has been called Ironmonger Lane for at least 800 years. It is one of the ribs that spur off from the spine of Cheapside (’cheap’ is Saxon for ‘market’) along with Bread St, Wood St, Milk St, and Honey Lane before Cheapside turns into Poultry. Ironmongers were one of the “Twelve Great Companies” that became London in cooperation with the Mercers, Grocers, Fishmongers, Drapers, Goldsmiths, Skinners, Merchant Taylors, Haberdashers, Salters, Vintners, and Clothworkers. The history and events that occured at this crux of a small street in London over the passage of hundreds of years I can only imagine. 900 hundreds ago England’s “2nd worst briton for the last 1000 years” Thomas a Beckett was born at the end of the Lane.

Peter Ackroyd, that great biographer of London, wrote several years ago that Ironmonger Lane has “had the same width for almost 355 years. That width was and is 14 feet, originally sufficient to allow two carts to pass each other without hindrance or blockage. It is another aspect of this continuous London history that its structure can accommodate itself to quite different modes of transport”. And so it has come to be that the 14 feet wide section lasted just 358 years, perhaps now wide enough for two mopeds to speed by one another.

After 14 weeks of gradual construction, much of the new grey bricked lane is already oil splattered and chipped at one end. How long until the next street improvement project, I wonder?

(As always, 4x5 Polaroid 55 scanned negative shot on 4x5 pinhole camera).