Hey mister, take my picture ..

When you think of great 'street' photographers the names Roger Mayne and Shirley Baker will, naturally, be up there in your top ten. So imagine how delighted I am to have some of my photographs included in a book with some of theirs.
I'm chuffed to bits, as they say ..

The book - 'Paradise Street' - is full of pictures of children playing in the street (A rare sight these days) and has just been published by the renowned Hoxton Mini Press in London. My copy was posted to me yesterday and I can't wait to see it. Not only that but the lady who compiled the collection was interviewed on Radio London last week and gave me a lovely name check. (Cheers, Luci. Back at ya!) Oooh, I'm dizzy with the fame. Touch my robe. Orderly line for autographs ..

The thing is that, thinking back to my 'archive' photographs from the 70s and early 80s, I can only feel sad that those kinds of shots are practically impossible to take these days. Hot on the heels of the Michael Jackson 'revelations', it's a horrible thing to know that, nowadays, a general view of photographers is that we're all perverted pædophiles. Why are you going up to kids in the street with a camera, you weirdo? Even sadder for me is the fact that the poor kids have been drilled to think the same thing. Lift a camera these days and it's the norm now to have 'Pædo' yelled at you by children not even ten years old. The beauty of the photograph of mine that's featured here is that those kids were actively trying to get into my photographs. Their cry of "Hey, mister, take my picture" is a line not many snappers will hear in the sunny twenty-first century. What a difference 42 years makes. Innocence lost, and it makes me sad ..

(Click on the picture to see one of my shots as it appears in the book ..)