Mouthpiece 3: On The Dotted Line - going behind the image

The streets aren’t paved with gold but the warm fluorescent glow spilling onto the wet flagstones like Chablis are a damn close second on this winter’s night in Soho. The deep blue-black of the sky only accentuates the staccato blasts of the neon signs trumpeting reds, pinks and oranges.

If it’s only Mad Dogs and Englishmen that go out in the midday sun, then maybe it’s just drunks and street photographers who stay out on nights like this. Fingerless gloves clutch numbly at the small black box, somehow adjusting dials without feeling them.

What warmth there is, is behind glass, lining a familiar path as I retrace many prior journeys into the ever beating heart of Soho. Chinatown - it’s swinging lanterns, steaming fumes and breath-coated windows, lies to my left. The grid of small streets and smaller bars and cafes of Frith Street, Dean Street and old Compton Street buzz to my right. My plan is to dip my lens into all of them as the evening takes a meandering shape around the spine of Shaftesbury Avenue.

A fellow street photographer once explained to me why he never go back to somewhere he had visited before. He explained how he would work the scene, maximising everything he could from it and tick the box. Done. Never to return.

And here I find myself outside the Curzon. I knew I would. For me, this is a scene I do return to. And very, very often. Far from completing it, like some street photography “I spy “checklist, I have unfinished business. It is always changing. Not just the light at the different times of day, not just the people passing through, but the window display. The Curzon is both a bar and cinema - the window acting as a huge advertising hoarding for whatever is showing inside. As the films change, so does the window.

On a cold winters night, the window display frames whatever activity happens within. Had I been approaching from the opposite direction my eyes would have been inexorably drawn to the fuchsia-pink neon legend “Curzon - Soho” - so often the backdrop to my images, as I work the scene over a long time stretch, seeking that elusive one shot that sums up everything else I’ve tried to achieve here before.

On this occasion, the sign is out of shot and my eye is drawn to the lone figure, the single glass and the impatient bottle of red. Head down, our protagonist is alone; searching for clues on his phone. Alone, yet not alone.

To his right, are the beautifully lit bottles on the shelf. Plenty to drown even the biggest sorrows. The text imprinted on the glass above our solitary hero reads “Completely Unique” as if to emphasise his singularity. And, almost out of shot, “A master at work,” perhaps suggesting something deeper and intentional is it play here. The film advertised? “Licorice Pizza.”

It’s a scene that’s impossible to avoid connecting with Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks painting - painted as Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. How apparent this similarity was to me at the time, I cannot say. My image took a fraction of the time to create - 1/250 of a second. I am sure my visual dictionary and subconscious must have come in to play. Nighthawks is certainly a touchstone image for me and surely informed my composition.

I do know I’m a storyteller at heart and Hopper’s painting, with its different stories imagined for each person in the bar, is a great example of narrative in art.

Of course, my choices as a photographer enabled me to create the version of the story I wanted to tell. A glance at the other images on the contact sheet show he was not the only person in the bar. A few steps in one direction and I could remove them from the scene. As for his silent, anxious minutes with his phone…Maybe he was checking the football results while his friends popped to the loo. For me, the joy of images like this, is in the ambiguity. We can project our own imaginings onto the characters. This is the kind of street photography that excites me most. It speaks of the human condition and that is something we can all connect with.

Speaking of connections. It was a few days after this image was first shared on Instagram that I was contacted by the hero of the story. It seems some colleagues had recognised him and he decided to reach out. He was delighted and, in time, I was thrilled to be able to gift him a large print to adorn his new home. We have since exchanged a number of direct messages. I hope all is well my friend.

Finally, this image, titled On The Dotted Line, has been shortlisted for the British Photography Awards in the Street category. There are some amazing images alongside it - check them out here:
On The Dotted Line | Street 2019 Shortlist | British Photography Awards

There are plenty of photographers who use Soho as their happy shooting ground. Today, I’m going to recommend you check out the work of somebody who worked in Soho, projectionist in one of the many cinemas its narrow streets in the last 30 years. Bob Mazzer, took photographs on the underground – the tube – as he travelled to and from work. They are a great record of their time and of life on this narrow slice of London below the streets. You can check out an interview with Bob here: https://www.lensculture.com/articles/bob-mazzer-life-from-a-tube-the-london-underground

More recently, Bob has produced a book of photographs of life in the south east of England-Sussex.

Currently available are Bob Mazzer:

And In Sussex

As a musical accompaniment, it has to be A Rainy Night In Soho by The Pogues.

Thanks for taking the time to join me in my thoughts. If anything has resonated, or you’d just like to say hello, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

All the best,