Les studying form
I spotted Les sitting in this recess and asked if it would be OK to take his photo. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time’ he said cryptically.
He used to work for a small specialist photographic dry mount company (dry mounting is the use of a dry tissue adhesive that is activated by heat from a heat press or an iron to bond artwork or a piece of fabric to a mounting board *).
Getting the exposure right for these photos was extremely challenging. The midday sun was directly behind us overhead, reflecting brightly from Les’s light coloured jacket. He stood out like a beacon against the matte-black painted shadowed interior, framed by the full sun on the brickwork arch. I hate to think what a reflected light meter reading would have suggested, the contrast was really harsh.
I was further challenged by the fact that the viewing screen of the Rolleicord, dark at the best of times, was completely washed out in the bright sunlight so I more or less guessed the framing of these two shots. I think I’m able to visualise the square format quite well now, though I wish I had taken several more bracketed shots.
Les was not just any old craftsman. He reeled off the names of most of the prominent Fleet Street photographers from 1960-1995 (he retired in 1995) that he had done work for, as well as artists such as Gilbert & George.
He helped prepare the huge panels for Gilbert & George’s Postcard Sculpture exhibition, using a massive 20 foot by 8 foot dry mount press.
He had a few stories about the Daily Mirror snappers too. On Mondays they would come in with hundreds of rolls of film they had shot over their weekend ‘off’ to get them developed. Most of these rolls were from their sidelines such as weddings and portraits. ‘They weren’t nicking though, or at least I don’t think they were. The film was all free so I suppose they just used it’. Les sounded quite moral on the subject.
On leaving him, I photographed this pair of sunglasses (with a Rolleinar I for the close-up):
The funny thing was, as I was focusing I heard Les’s voice behind me. ‘Are you taking a photo of them sunglasses?’ he asked slightly incredulously. It turned out he had found them several days earlier, sans arms, and had hung them on the nail on the fence in case somebody should come back to look for them. ‘Why would anybody want to wear a pair of glasses like that?’ he said. Exactly my thoughts. I thought they looked more like an alien butterfly than sunglasses anyway.
And just to round it off, I found a pukka pair of 3D sunglasses, fully functional, on the way home!
* More information about dry mounting at http://www.trueart.info/dry_mounting.htm
by skinnyvoice
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