Back in 2009, in the very early days of my urban photography career, I was wandering around Ladbroke Grove, not far at all from Grenfell Tower, on one of my typical days out shooting urban photography.
I walked passed a typical lawn garden in front of a terraced house and something, or rather someone, grabbed my attention. An elderly couple sitting in front of their flat watching the world go by.
As I often do… I kept walking for a bit, until I turned around and went back, smiled at them, paused for a second, took the shot and strangely… walked away without interacting with them.
The shot turned out great but there was a lingering feeling of having stolen it, and it never sat very well with me as much as I’ve always loved this photo or rather what this photo revealed.
Love in a sense was very evident, there was a lot for me to interpret in this shot. I mostly envied them for having found someone to age with.
A few years went by and this remained one of my most popular photographs, achieving recognition at the International Street Photography Awards.
In 2017 I still felt regret, I wanted them to have a copy of the print.
So in July that year I decided to do something about it, I would find them again.
I posted a tweet:
Within 24h and 223 retweets later... we'd found them. We had their name, Roy & Rose, and even an address where I could send a few prints. I say “we” because so many people joined to help.
The first person to get in touch was @dejfitzgerald on Twitter, someone who’d gone out of their way to help via a local Facebook group.
They’d found Roy’s brother Terry who got in touch, soon followed by his sister Celia and their nephew Martin, Roy and Rose’s son.
I exchanged correspondence with them all, unfortunately finding out that Roy had died three years earlier.
I was very annoyed at myself for not doing this earlier.
Here’s some of the exchange we had:
Celia:
“Every time I look at it, I chuckle because it was such an accurate portrayal of them and just captures the essence of them which is the mark of a great photo!”
Martin:
"The print really does catch everything about mum & dad. You really have made my day, we don't have many photos of them as an old couple.. we don't have many of them together in there later years - so it really does mean a lot. Especially as it's AMAZING as well, seeing that makes me remember how dad was before he got ill, & the image of them sitting in the garden with the little coffee cups watching the world go by brings a massive smile to my face. Sometimes you forget the good times."
Following this I sent them five A4 size prints of the photo, so all could have one as well as Rose of course.
And soon after Martin sent me a photo of his mum holding the print, she seems happy and a little emotional.
Moments like these restore my faith in people and reaffirm why I love photography so much, it captures a moment in time which could be gone forever.
It is even more relevant when I look at my past decade of street photography shot in London and how much it contrasts with 2020.
How can it be that photos shot only a couple of years ago feel like such a distant time? I look at them and feel nostalgic.
If only I could give a print to all the people I photographed around London, I’d be a very poor man but a very happy one.
Do you have any similar positive stories relating to photography to share? Leave a comment but also share and like this.