Mike Taylor
@miketaylor8 Aug
I think this might be my first ever “street” photograph. The street in question is Bouverie Street - part of the area in London known as Fleet Street where most of the UK’s newspapers were based - and it was taken in the spring of ‘86 during the printers strike. Rupert Murdoch had moved production of his titles to a non-union plant in Wapping. This was taken on a march to the plant. I was a journalist at the time and a member of the NUJ. I don’t remember having a camera with me, but I obviously did…
It really gives a tension, a feeling of imposed containment, a sense of exclusion. I like it.
Thank you Jonathan. Those were tough days. It was a dark time.
Yes it was, on so many levels.
I had a job lined up as a journalist on The Sunday Times. I was working out my notice in local papers when Wapping happened. All the people had worked with at the Sunday Times in Greys Inn Road weren’t moving to Wapping, so I didn’t either. It cost me a staff job but lead to other things. Years later when I worked at ITN on the the same site in GIR I had a desk that was about 10 feet from the same point in space as the desk I’d sat at doing shifts at the ST.
The salubrious College of Journalism and the days when Canon and Nikon ruled the roost. Plus, one of the surreal ads from that era on the billboard for ciggies owing to the restrictions.
Thank you.