Showing posts with label 1991. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1991. Show all posts

Sunday 9 July 2017

The Girl on the Number Fifty-Two Omnibus . . . Between Stops . . .


Between stops

she thought :

Were it so simple that I could pause here
comma

(    at this convex mirror    )

where my gaze is
comma

I’d hope
to study the immediate glitter of its parenthesis
comma

were it so simple that I could stop
comma



1972: She boards the 52 bound for the Pushkin Club at
 46 Ladbroke Grove. (Photo from an extraordinarily eccentric book,
published in 1991, The Girl in the Street, composed entirely
and obsessively of 150 pages of candid-camera snapshots
taken over three decades of young women in European capitals
in desirable – not to say fetishistic – propinquity to omnibuses or
trams, with specification minutiae and slavish detail as to the
arcana of urban public transport vehicle pedigrees; i.e. the London
Transport AEC Routemaster above, we’re told, is Production
Number 238. Conversely, in each picture the identity of the young
woman snapped unawares is unknown. ‘An essential work
for all lovers of public service vehicles and students of fashion
design.’  Robert E. Jowitt, author and photographer.)