8 ms·
1960s Kodachrome photos of London’s East End
- UncleSlacky 9y agoThere are a few additional photos in this article: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2018/feb/13/east-end-in-colour-london-david-granick https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2018/feb/13...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- eesmith 9y agoKodachrome They give us those nice bright colors They give us the greens of summers Makes you think all the world's a sunny day I got a Nikon camera I love to take a photograph So mama don't take my Kodachrome away Those are some nice pictures. I lack the geographical and cultural context to really appreciate them though. What I know about the East End comes third-hand.
- DamonHD 9y agoWell, working in the City and the Wharf and a bit out onto the Isle of Dogs over the last ~15Y I think that I recognise some of those places at little! Goodness!
- Jaruzel 9y agoA 'then and now' side by side would a nice update to this set, if someone had the time to do it.
- chanandler_bong 9y agoNot specifically 'then and now', but Chris Dorley-Brown has some great modern shots of the area: http://chris3.500px.com/ http://chris3.500px.com/ http://www.modrex.com/ http://www.modrex.com/
- TheOtherHobbes 9y agoGreat photos! Thanks for those links.
- alex_hitchins 9y agoThank you for posting this. I love these flashbacks to my childhood era(ish).
- ChrisArchitect 9y agolovely people details in those photos - always people going this way and that but then there's a guy carrying a kids bike, a guy riding a lawnmower etc....
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- norikki 9y agoGardiner’s Corner: https://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/lg/51718/image.jpg https://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/lg/51718/imag... https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5152437,-0.0720941,3a,75y,103.1h,93.98t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sTVdGZTJdpfbHEP3NN2b15g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5152437,-0.0720941,3a,75y,10...
- thisisthisis 9y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrRRhoS3KFk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrRRhoS3KFk
- foobar1962 9y agoKodachrome is stable as long as it’s in darkness. Light fades them pretty quickly. Back in the day originals would be on Kodachrome, from which copies would be made on Ektachrome for projection in slide displays or an inter-negative on Kodacolor for enlarging.
- isfield 9y agoThe Stifford estate photo is my favorite. The 'new' brutalist architecture of social housing marching in over the old pre war landscape. It's hard to imagine the utopia it was supposed to represent. Roll forwards 20 years those sorts of buildings represented drugs crime and poverty.
- jdietrich 9y agoBrutalist developments in London are weirdly polarised. Either they've been torn down because of chronic social problems like the Heygate estate, or they're Grade II listed and massively desirable like Trellick Tower, the Barbican or Rowley Way.
- theoh 9y agoIt's important to know that the Barbican was built as luxury housing. Trellick or Alexandra Road were social housing and they still have a much broader social mix.
- andybak 9y agoThe Barbican makes me feel like I've woken up in a J.G. Ballard novel.
- bodyfour 9y agoAs someone said above, it's a polarising place. On one hand, I'm sure I would hate living in a city where everything looked like the Barbican. Yet, every time I'm there I'm awed by its strange beauty. It has such a strong identity.. it feels like walking inside a sculpture.
- lambdadmitry 9y agoI found that one part of the feeling you describe comes from it being "organic" in an unusual way. It's easy to find any number of modern buildings that use "organic" shapes or materials (think curved or made from wood). However, they will still be boring and predictable inside and fit into a very boring street grid outside. Barbican is different: it's "brutalist" and as un-organic in its material as possible, but the structure itself is an unpredictable, multilevel maze where you don't know what awaits you around the corner. That provokes a very different feeling, more akin to a forest over the rolling hills than to a city. And it's built that way both inside and out, at least as far as public spaces are concerned. I think that different kind of "organic" is why I love Barbican. There aren't many places that make me feel like a child exploring a new area, but Barbican is the best at that.
- stupidcar 9y agoThese are lovely. The photographer who found and digitised these also has some great shots in a similar vein: https://chris3.500px.com/ https://chris3.500px.com/
- scraplab 9y agoAnd his Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/chrisdorleybrown https://www.instagram.com/chrisdorleybrown
- joelhaasnoot 9y agoThis is amazing. Having watched "Call the Midwife" and stayed in the docklands area in London, this puts into perspective some of the 'scars' in the landscape you can still see today
- things 9y agoI attempted to locate the photos in this set on streetview. Some were easier than others. In the same order: Whitechapel Road https://www.google.com/maps/place//@51.5173129,-0.0668225,3a,75y,17.4h,87.7t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m4!1s74ir4lgSyHqvhdEMTMXSkw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x48761ccb0a8b7f6d:0x9684fb5c0030a5b7!8m2!3d51.5175392!4d-0.0667101 https://www.google.com/maps/place//@51.5173129,-0.0668225,3a... Spitalsfield Market https://www.google.be/maps/@51.5190196,-0.0773324,3a,75y,74.08h,65.17t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sjMBZS1VjhIBUX4pXsBCiJw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.be/maps/@51.5190196,-0.0773324,3a,75y,74.... Belhaven Street (no longer exists, got as close as I could) https://www.google.be/maps/@51.5286117,-0.0380893,3a,75y,27.65h,96.46t/data=!3m9!1e1!3m7!1sCOIexeZKAYrKE8J_BZHGHw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!9m2!1b1!2i29 https://www.google.be/maps/@51.5286117,-0.0380893,3a,75y,27.... Stifford Estate (demolished) https://www.google.be/maps/@51.5174684,-0.0497713,3a,75y,285.91h,86.01t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sdtjHoFQt5HHuo4ufaEBfJg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.be/maps/@51.5174684,-0.0497713,3a,75y,285... Mile End Road https://www.google.be/maps/place/@51.5243606,-0.0367707,3a,75y,6.77h,93.51t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sy2m8kAtBnzHdEU2Ge9Zb4g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!4m5!3m4!1s0x48761d2fee6bccd7:0x3a3ec53002ba66a3!8m2!3d51.5245299!4d-0.0367119 https://www.google.be/maps/place/@51.5243606,-0.0367707,3a,7... Three Colt Street (difficult to get the exact location so got one with visible landmark) https://www.google.be/maps/place/@51.5096904,-0.03012,3a,75y,359.02h,95.62t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s3wPvNbqhxNhzS-9avdcFOA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!4m5!3m4!1s0x487602cc1cb39bb5:0xe66febb5f8bac6bf!8m2!3d51.5099132!4d-0.0302586 https://www.google.be/maps/place/@51.5096904,-0.03012,3a,75y... Watney Market (massively changed but pointing in the right direction over the area) https://www.google.be/maps/@51.5128337,-0.0581398,3a,75y,348.49h,87.44t/data=!3m10!1e1!3m8!1su7WW-D6EeZqjzUOf4U3h9A!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3Du7WW-D6EeZqjzUOf4U3h9A%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D306.88754%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656!9m2!1b1!2i29 https://www.google.be/maps/@51.5128337,-0.0581398,3a,75y,348... Gardiner’s Corner (nothing left, the department store burnt down in the seventies) https://www.google.be/maps/@51.5151995,-0.0716539,3a,75y,289.03h,91.32t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s3Z9Nm_G3Cm27V2cTNR-Tzg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.be/maps/@51.5151995,-0.0716539,3a,75y,289...
- brusch64 9y agoThank you for your effort - this is awesome. When I was watching the pictures I wished to see current picturese of these areas.
- lmm 9y agoCripes, that introduction is laying it on a bit thick: > “…the photographer knows he’s getting the last shots of those wharves, steamers and warehouses before they are replaced by imagined hotels and marinas, the proto-blueprint for the new world dominated by leisure, tourism and heritage replicas. These post-dockland utopias are soon to be upgraded into big business steel and glass, craven monuments of late capitalism. The future was in a distant haze, just around the corner.” These photos should remind us that East London has always been changing, that progress is real but slow. Those "craven monuments of late capitalism" are every bit as utopian in their own way as the blocks being built in these photos, and in my experience much nicer places to live and work.
- andybak 9y agoAnd large parts of those photos can be seen still today. Biggest differences I noticed: 1. You won't see those cars obviously 2. Shop fronts have changed styles. More modern branding. More large chains But if anything I was surprised by familiar they look. I grew up in London in the 70s and 80s and I remember scenes almost identical to those. And even still you can find large parts of London that resemble that.
- lambdadmitry 9y agoEven the very same street on one of the photos: https://goo.gl/maps/G3HRFX3SAgQ2 https://goo.gl/maps/G3HRFX3SAgQ2
- confounded 9y agoPeople that can afford to live in either a new luxury flat or a 1960s ex-council flat, will generally prefer the former. That’s not generally the gripe with gentrification; it’s that in the experience of most of the residents of an area, gentrification expells not enriches them. Their lives and communities are used as fuel for someone else’s private fire.
- sizzzzlerz 9y agoI love looking at the street views with the little shops and taverns. Its an interesting reminder of the times when there wasn't an Amazon or Costco or a myriad number of cookie cutter bars and restaurants. Of course, these are the places that drove them out of business for good, if not for better.
- cm2187 9y agoIn fact I find the most mundane pictures of street life to be the most interesting for anything older than 30y old. But those are the pictures taken today that people today would dismiss as uninteresting when it is really what will amuse them the most in 30 years.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoI wonder how accessible all the photos on Instagram and Twitter will be in 30 years' time.
- skookumchuck 9y agoWhen I look through old family photos, the photos I want to see are the mundane ones that weren't taken surely because they were thought to be boring. Like a picture of the supermarket we patronized.
- perardi 9y agoI am absolutely a sucker for the look of Kodachrome, and I'm glad I managed to shoot one roll before processing of it ended. The processing itself is rather convoluted and interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-14_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-14_process
- eveningcoffee 9y agoRatio between image sides is 1.25 meaning that it is likely the scans came either from 6x7 (cm) medium format slides or more probably from the 4x5 (inch, or larger) large format slides.
- gunzel 9y agoUnlikely, Kodachrome larger than 35mm was dead after the mid 1950's, there was a brief revival of medium format in the 1980's, but it didn't last long. I suspect the format might be more driven by the format of the book.
- eveningcoffee 9y agoSo more likely crops made from 35mm slides?
- abritinthebay 9y agoDoes anyone with a photographic bent know what the modern equivalent of Kodachrome would be? (Stable, archival quality, rich color reproduction, and digitizes well)
- dboreham 9y agoUpload to both AWS and GCP and use a Canon DSLR, retaining raw sensor data?
- abritinthebay 9y agoUnless you're shooting a DSLR with ~140 megapixels of resolution... it's not the same thing at all.
- dboreham 9y agoI'm not sure, but I _think_ you're asserting that the information content of a 35mm Kodachrome slide taken in the 1970's is 140 Mpix. It isn't. Not remotely close. A present-day DSLR (e.g. 5Ds) with a present-day lens is going to greatly exceed that slide's information content.
- abritinthebay 9y agoI'm not asserting anything. A 35mm Kodachrome transparency, like other 35mm transparencies on films of comparable ISO rating, contains an equivalent of approximately 140 megapixels of data in its 24 mm x 36 mm image. Citation: Langford, Michael (2000). Basic Photography (7th Ed.). Oxford: Focal Press. p. 99. Film has vastly more resolution than even high-end DSLRs. This isn't shocking or surprising if you know anything about the space.
- iamatworknow 9y agoIn terms of current film stock I've shot Kodak Ektar probably comes the closest to the look of Kodachrome, but it's still pretty far off. I think the processing technique for Kodachrome is what really made it unique, and since that's gone nothing else quite compares.
- Slansitartop 9y agoWhat's with the submission date? It currently says I submitted this 12 hours ago, but that's not true at all: I submitted it closer to 24 hours ago.