Anonymous

1914 · ref. 87332 — London 1914. Tall Octavo. 24.5cm. Original green cloth over bevelled boards titled "Photographs" in gilt to the lower front cover. 24pp; 48 3" x 4" black and white images in total. Light bumping and scuffing to corners and spine ends cup ring to front board some light scuffing strong and tight. Internally clean with heavy grey card mounting leaves 2 captioned numbered and often dated images per page. Photographs are clear sharp and well composed with no apparent defects or signs of wear. A very good handsome album. Photographer unidentified. but clearly at least a gifted amateur this album judging from the numbers on the image captions is one surviving volume of at least two or three. The execution is excellent the composition and subject matter are far beyond the usual "Here's a picture of Big Ben!" genre of London photography; major landmarks are represented Hyde Park Kew The Embankment Cleopatra's Needle etc. but the manner of the photography is more artisitic than purely descriptive. The image of Cleopatra's Needle for example is captioned as such but the focus of the image is a small Edwardian boy in a Norfolk Jacket and knickerbockers lounging across one of the bronze sphinxes. The views of the River Thames in particular elevate this album to degree of historical usefulness; the shipping details including a number of photos taken from the water have effectively preserved vernacular images of the sheer weight and diversity of shipping at a time when the river ports of London were the arguably the most important in the world. Aside from the usual luggers and rowboats there are a number of photos of sail wherries and river barges which for a long period of time were the pre-eminent open water trading and delivery vessels in the UK with wherries and shallow water barges making their way from the enormous larder of East Anglia and the North East down to London. Wool potatoes ropetextiles from Manchester steel work from Sheffield and the North West coal from Sunderland and Newcastle all traveled mainly by water right up to the 1940's and in some places later. There were barge crews in the 1960's essentially doing the same jobs in the same vessels that their extended and often clannish families had been doing for 200 years or more. The watermen depicted navigating the Thames' vicious currents in these photos were essentially the same men who carried Pepys Newton and Marlowe backwards and forwards between the palaces of Westminster and the stews bear pits and rookeries of the Surreyside. Where there are clear avenues of industry there are the necessary shadow economies that accompany them; there are a number of images of small ragged children scouring the foreshore or "Mudlarking" as it was known around the breaking wharfs where barges and ships too old and dangerous for use were destroyed for re-usable lumber and fittings. A bag of copper nails or a few salvaged shackles even salvaged rope could be enough to get a few pennies at the back door of Pocock's bargebuilders down near Rotherhithe. In contrast to these off the beaten track images of industry and poverty there are also depictions of the more fortunate wandering around Hyde Park or Kew visiting the Palace or St. James Park. Also present in a slightly forboding fashion is an image of Graham White's biplane flight at Hendon on July 11th 1914 only 17 days before the opening of hostilities in WW1 an event which would quickly transform aviation from a public spectacle of wonder to the pre-eminent weapon of 20th century warfare. The fact that these images were all taken on the very brink of a conflict that would change every aspect of what they depict is sobering; the UK lost almost a million military casualties during the conflict meaning that a very significant number of the men and boys in these images would be dead within a handful of years of them being photographed. In the words of John Burns "Every drop of the Thames is liquid history. unknown books