All posts by Thomas Pindelski

The East End

Still resolute. Still broken.

The best illustration of how poorly the Nazis understood the staunch character of the British is seen in their targeting of the East End of London in their bombing of innocent civilians in The Blitz of World War II. The poorest people lived in the East End and the Germans’ thinking was that the best way to break England’s resolve was to drop bombs on them. What they succeeded in doing, of course, was simply to strengthen the courage and resolve of these very tough, admirable people.

By July, 1975, when these pictures were taken, Germany’s war debts had been forgiven by the United States and the German recovery was complete. By contrast, no such forgiveness was enjoyed by Americans’ staunchest allies, the British, who finally repaid their US loans just a few years ago. So much for the much vaunted ‘Special Relationship’. The East End of London remained very much broken when these images were made. And, my word, was it ever ugly to behold.


Likely lads. The English work ethic writ large.


Jackhammer.


Teddy at Tower Bridge. Go figure.


Still broken.


Shakespeare, however, rules.


Passageways like this one harken back to the London of Conan Doyle.


Discarded.


St. Paul’s Cathedral.


Despite a direct hit from the Luftwaffe, St. Paul’s somehow survived.

Is still don’t understand what was happening here. The fat fellow was heaping abuse on the figure in sackcloth and chains, tightening the latter now and then to his own great amusement as he poured invective on the poor person inside. A sado-masochistic treat which the crowd seemed quite fascinated by.






The crowd, fascinated

Update: I checked in with my sister, a UK resident to this day, and she writes: “It’s to do with the plague and the church. The bodies were wrapped in sackcloth for burial, the chains denoting that the deceased had died without the last rites! if you had the plague, no one would go near you to administer the last rites.” So there!

Leica M3, 35mm Summaron and 90mm Elmar, TriX, ‘scanned’ on the Nikon D800.

Reg Butler

Thank you, Reg.

I will always be grateful to the nutty ‘sculptures’ of the English artist Reg Butler because the first image below won me the “Photographer of the Year” award from Britain’s ‘Photography’ magazine. This came with a nice cup (which I promptly dropped and dented!) and a bunch of camera gear. I had to return the cup a year later and they were nice enough not to notice. Equally as promptly I sold the latter (my camera was the Leica M3, enough said) and the proceeds kept me in film, paper and chemicals for the next twelve months. Thank you, Reg. These were all snapped in May, 1975.

The reactions of the viewers of Reg’s quite awful sculptures are what makes this series fun.



Photographer of the Year, Photography magazine, 1975.


Hmmm. Bummer.




Profile ….


…. and rear


Sneaking a peek ….


…. or two.


‘Living sculpture’ Gilbert, or George. I forget which.



Disinterested spectators.


Checking it out.

Leica M3, 35mm Summaron, TriX, ‘scanned’ on the Nikon D800.

Newspaper vendors

Seeing large.

Freshly back from my trip to Paris in September 1974 my street vision was honed. I had long enjoyed the characterful faces of the many street vendors of daily papers and set about the task, walking from Charing Cross along Knightsbridge to Earls Court. As pixel peeking attests – as do the headlines – all were taken on one day, September 24, 1974. These are mostly sequential images. Waste of film was simply not a concept.










Leica M3, 35mm Summaron, TriX, ‘scanned’ with a Nikon D800.

The Louvre

As good as museums get.

One of the four great art museums in the western hemisphere (The National Gallery – London, The Uffizi – Florence, The Metropolitan Museum of Art – New York being the others) it’s often said you could visit The Louvre in Paris daily for a year and still only experience a fraction of what it has to offer. Housed in a magnificent palace, visiting The Louvre is an essential destination on any tour of the world’s greatest art and sculpture collections.

First, it’s essential to arrive by Metro at The Louvre stop, as the station is decorated with glass encased sculpures. The prevailing memory I have, after buying my ticket, is the scent of oil paint, for the Louvre was full of copyists seeking to improve their skills.











The beautiful cobbled yard in the last image was destroyed in 1989 by an execrable excrescence known as The Pyramid, designed by I. M. Pei, an architect not usually known for bad taste, as his JFK Library in Boston and East Wing of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. attest. Quite how this monstrosity is meant to fit in with the French Renaissance style of the museum continues to defeat understanding.

All taken on a Leica M3, 35mm Summaron and 90mm Elmar lenses on TriX, ‘scanned’ on a Nikon D800.