London 1982

Peter MARSHALL


Deptford Creek from the railway bridge looking north, Lewisham/Greenwich, Woolwich. 1982
30o-42: river, creek, works, power station, cranes,

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The second of the two frames I took from the bridge shows Deptford Power Station on the left, and like many of the buildings which can be seen this is no longer there, its chimney demolished in a dramatic explosion in 1992. On the left bank of the creek is now the Laban Dance Centre opened in 2003.
 
The Leica M2 I was using had a transport lever placed to be operated by your right thumb had to be pushed some distance to the right to move the next frame of film into position before each exposure and it also rewound the spring-operated shutter. With practice this probably took roughly a second, during which time the train had moved some distance across the bridge.
 
The tide was fairly high and filled the channel, which was navigable for around a quarter of a mile beyond the bridge I was travelling over, as far as a large mill just to the north of Deptford Bridge. At low tide there would only have been a narrow channel between mud banks.