London 1981

Peter MARSHALL


Palm Court Hotel and other derelict property, Riverside, Richmond, 1981
27w-21: hotel, derelict, Richmond

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I took this picture in May 1981, and eighteen months earlier I had made a portrait format picture from almost exactly the same spot, the greater vertical angle of coverage enabling me to move just a couple of feet closer in. As I commented on >Re:PHOTO in 2013, "Little had changed though perhaps the weeds had grown a little".
 
Over my years as a photographer there are many places I've returned to, often time after time, and made pictures which so often are uncannily similar, almost as if I had made chalk marks on the ground. For some reason, just to the left of the centre of the steps and framing from the bottom step to the top of the roof was how this had to be.
 
Change was coming, and again in that 2013 post I wrote:
 
"I used to visit the area quite often at night some years earlier than my photograph, nursing a pint of bitter for an evening in my student years as I listened to the likes of Bobby Wellins playing in the old Palm Court Hotel. I wasn’t taking pictures then – I couldn’t afford to, as photography then was an expensive business – but later I took a few pictures of the exterior before the controversial redevelopment by Quinlan Terry in 1984 which rebuilt the Grade II listed façade but lost the atmosphere."