Rugged.

By September, 1976 I had decided that it was time to move to the New World but one last trip to the wilds of Scotland was indicated. Rugged and windswept these are very remote places in seemingly terminal population decline. And who can wonder?

The various islands are connected by ferries and I recall making some pretty rough crossings.

Leica M3, 35mm Summaron, 50mm Summicron, 90mm Elmar and Nikon F, 28mm and 80-200mm Vivitar lenses, TriX, ‘scanned’ on the Nikon D800.

Sunny interlude.

That rarest of events in London, a sunny Sunday, brings out the crowds. And while these images were snapped at a park parade on Easter Sunday in 1976. the watchers were of greater interest than the paraders.

Leica M3, 35mm Summaron, 50mm Summicron, TriX ‘scanned’ with the Nikon D800.

Though completed in 1935, Battersea Power Station on the south bank of London’s Thames very much adheres to the high Victorian dictates of English architecture. Large, foreboding, massive, lugubrious, overpowering and anything but welcoming, it was decommissioned in 1975, just a few months before these images were taken in March, 1976.

The forces that be wrangled for almost four decades (!) about how to redevelop the site which is now a high end shopping and residential location. Needless to add, it was sold to foreign investors like pretty much everything else in today’s England.

Nikon F, 28mm Vivitar, TriX, ‘scanned’ with the Nikon D800.

Theft central.

Dating from 1852, the Victoria and Albert Museum in west London houses what may be the greatest collection of stolen arts and crafts in the western hemisphere. The English excuse this act of plunder as ‘Colonialism’. I call it theft. The colonies are now gone but the V&A remains.

Still, morals apart, there was always something of interest to be found there when these images were snapped in October, 1975.

Nikon F, 28mm Vivitar, TriX, ‘scanned’ with the Nikon D800.

Nothing like a good blaze.

A fire is guaranteed to bring out the pyromaniac in all of us, even though few carry matches. There’s something irresistible about watching a good blaze. This one was in a clothing store on Kensington High Street in October, 1975:

Leica M3, 35mm Summaron, 50mm Summicron, 90mm Elmar, TriX ‘scanned’ on the Nikon D800.