Who would have believed it?!
Over 40 years on and here we are looking at a Gallery of photographs showing Margaret Thatcher in and around her Finchley constituency, meeting loads of rather interesting people.
Now if anyone had told me as an enthusiastic youthful freelance Press photographer, that the photographs I captured in a brief period from 1977-82, would eventually be displayed in an online gallery, rather than newspaper print, I just wouldn’t have believed them; possibly of course because the Internet hadn’t yet been invented, and ‘online’ was generally an everyday reference to drying the washing.
It is rather strange for me to see the initial batch of 40 photographs, many for the first time, particularly given the cost of photographic paper and chemicals back then, effectively restricted how many I could affordably print and submit for possible publication.
Now if you find the first tranche of interest, I’m pleased to say there should be around 120 more which will be added over the coming year (I’ve just got to find enough time to tidy them up before publication).
For anyone that’s interested in the creative aspects of photography, you might be as surprised as I was to discover that out of all the pictures that were taken, around one in three were suitable for publication, which does rather underscore the historic convention of many film photographers, only press the shutter once the image looks right.
Somewhat usefully, Mrs Thatcher was possibly unique in that any photograph taken where she thought she could perhaps have momentarily closed her eyes, was invariably followed by the suggestion that “I think I may have blinked, do you want to take another one?”
As a very young photographer, it was an extremely steep learning process to try and capture the ‘Iron Lady’ within a somewhat relaxed photoreportage style, but whether I actually succeeded or not, I shall have to leave that up to you to decide.
I hope you like the photos, and if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to use the ‘Contact’ form and I’ll try and get back to you when I can.
Hopefully I’ll look to add some additional information about the images in future blog posts, but for now … enjoy!
JonF
P.S. If you’d like to kindly purchase any of the images in the Portfolio, I rather thought the Baroness might be agreeably amused if part of the proceeds are set aside to support the vital work of our local food banks.