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Things My Dad Saw (That Didn’t Make The Book)


After Mum died in March 1995, Dad never went back to his job in a sports shop. He was heartbroken, exhausted and not *that* far off retirement age anyway. Instead, he began to spend more and more time out with his camera in London – taking countless photographs of the city he knew and loved. But he didn’t always think to mention where he’d been and what he’d seen. And I didn’t always think to ask…

Things My Dad Saw (But Never Bothered Mentioning) is a – sort of – prequel to How Graffiti Saved My Dad’s Life (At Least For A While). It’s a collection of Dad’s London street photography – Stop the War marches, performing budgies, naked bike rides and more – dating from the late 1990s to around 2012.

In compiling this book, I was once again faced with a huge challenge: which pictures to use from the many, many albums and memory cards Dad left behind?

Picture quality was a major consideration. Not all the negatives from the pre-digital shots survived and many of the A5 scans just weren’t good enough to make the final cut – which is why this one of the Royal Family on the balcony at Buckingham Palace ended up in the ‘overs’ pile…
Royals on balcony

There were also lots of pictures of celebrities: Gordon Ramsay running the London Marathon; Dawn French strolling through Trafalgar Square; and a delightful close-up of Rolf Harris at an art fair, taken back when he was a much-loved family entertainer and adopted national treasure, rather than… well… you know…

Quick! Let’s change the subject – here’s that nice Tony Hadley from Spandau Ballet…

Tony Hadley

Oh, and here’s another picture that didn’t make the book: writer and broadcaster Robert Elms interviewing a giant hamster…

Now, that’s something you don’t see every day.

All profits from Things My Dad Saw (But Never Bothered Mentioning) are going to St Christopher’s Hospice. Price £5, you can buy a copy online; at the hospice reception in Sydenham; at next week’s DIY Space for London Zine Fair in Peckham; or at the Northwest Zinefest in Manchester at the end of July.

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