More Bob Mazzer On The Tube
July 20, 2013
“In all my time taking pictures on the tube, only one person ever objected, ” revealed photographer Bob Mazzer, “and that was a guy with a huge teddy bear on his lap, which was a pity because it would have been a great picture.”
“I think if you love people, they respond to that and find it perfectly natural to be photographed,” he confessed to me.” I feel compelled to take photographs on the tube now, and I can’t travel without a camera because I can’t bear the thought I might miss something.”
Photographs copyright © Bob Mazzer
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Ha ha! More great pictures. They are all here – the mad, the lonely, the bored, the dispossessed – and the unconscious. Bob Mazzer is up there with Garry Winogrand.
What a great start to the day, and a wonderful celebration of the diversity of London life.
again, just such great photos, in so many ways.
Can’t believe how good these are! Quirky, captivating and entertaining… a wonderful seeing eye. I shall never now view a tube journey in the same way!
I’m sure it wasn’t like this when I used to travel each day on the tube. But that probably means I took it all for granted like many of the passengers in these photos. A great eye for the interesting. Great photos. Thanks
Bonus pictures! The people being photographed really engaged with the camera. Fascinating stuff!
i love the last photograph – that beautiful face staring back at us over the years, yet how many people noticed him at the time? What an eye for humanity Bob has.
Wow! I thought I’d enjoyed the other ones until I saw these. Thanks so much for that trip down memory lane with Lord Mustard.
Excellent to see Lord Mustard. He is featured in “The London Nobody Knows”, a wonderful 1967 documentary film presented by James Mason (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or-OQgpdQHQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player). Later he moved to Oxford and was a regular feature of the street scene when I was a student in the early 1990s, tap dancing on the Cornmarket to country and western numbers in a rainbow fright wig. He died about 5 years ago at the age of 1996, still tap dancing until the very end.
Beautiful, thank you!
The boy looking out from between the gap in the doors reminds me of something I saw on the way home one Friday night in the 80s. A City gent ran to get on the tube at Monument and just managed to get on as the doors were closing. Sadly, the doors chopped off the bunch of flowers he was taking home for his wife. The guys I worked with used to take flowers home on Fridays to make up for being late back from work every night.
Some wonderful shots here and in the other sequences. Takes me back to a different, funkier London. Especially liked the one of Lord Mustard/AKA Earl of Mustard/Jumping Jack whom I knew very well – busked with him in the sixties and seventies and learned a lot. A character indeed. Last time I saw him he was staying with me in Nottingham in the 80’s then he took off for Newcastle and was never seen again. Interesting about the info on him turning up in Oxford – was talking to another busker from the old West End days a few weeks ago about him and we wondered what had become of him. RIP, Norman Norris…
Love that woman sticking her tongue out in the first photo. What a scream. And how fabulous that she was wearing a pink jumper in all that drab grey. I almost missed her.
Thank you (again) for introducing me to such an amazing photographer. I think every Londoner has an instinctive love of the underground, it’s hardwired in us, and these photographs speak to me in so many ways.
Lord Mustard was one of a kind. He had a regular pitch outside of Bayswater tube station in 1977 and I remember his unique style. Nobody tap-danced quite like Lord M.