JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 443
"And all the people that come and go
Stop and say hello." --Penny Lane, the Beatles.
This lovely image comes from Views of London, New Series, "photographed, printed and published by the London Stereoscopic & Photographic Co., Ltd., of Regent Street, London", and printed in 1896. It shows the street scene outside of the New Law Courts on Fleet Street--new legal chambers that were a mixture of odd Victorian tastes for the modern and Gothic, preserving the Medieval along the way. But that's not what I'm attracted by here--I'm interested in the little bit at the bottom-right of the image, a little slice of life of common London trying to make a a few bob off the barristers and support staffs from across the street, of all the people who would come in to say "hello".. As you can see in the enlargement, there are a host of opportunities available for a penny: meals, rooms, even a bath. That's the possibility of the hidden life of images like this--the incidental and normally invisible landscapes attached to the object of interest are far more interesting to me than the thing that the camera was pointed at.
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