England, November 1988

These are snaps from my first trip to England. I went with my friend Jennifer Stricker and a group of students from Belhaven College, hosted by the late (and great) Dr. William Durrett, over the Thanksgiving break in 1988. We flew Pan Am and arrived back home just a week before the terrible Lockerbie, Scotland bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

Some of the highlights included: searching for Paul Weller’s house (which, after much foot traversing of St. John’s Wood, I never could find), visiting Stonehenge, buying a new vinyl copy of The Jam’s Sound Affects at Tower Records- Piccadilly Circus, seeing the Lords Of The New Church at the infamous Marquee Club, and the amazing atmosphere of the pubs (not to mention the beer).

I took along my Olympus OM-1 35mm camera and a fresh bulk roll of Tri-X film. I remember being hassled in airport security (and rightly so!) with the officials wanting to look inside my bulk film loader. It was a little plastic black box about 6″ x 2″ so it must have looked very suspect. At any rate, when I explained to them that it was film and that it would be ruined if they opened the canister to look inside, they actually let me go ahead and board the flight after much discussion with superiors. Unbelievable! So I used it to capture the black & white frames pictured above. They are scanned from the original prints on AFGA warm-tone archival paper that I made upon my return. If I remember correctly, the shots of me were taken by Jennifer Stricker.

December 30, 2010

Tags: agfa, belhaven college, denny, dr. william durrett, england, hotel russell, jennifer stricker, lockerbie, london, lords of the new church, olympus om-1, pan am, piccadilly circus, russell square, salisbury, scotland, sound affects, stonehenge, the jam, the marquee club, tower records, tri-x, vinyl