Over London reprint . Jason Hawkes published by Harper Collins
Synopsis from Harper Collins :
A fascinating aerial overview of just how much London has changed since the 1920s. Jason Hawkes is the most successful aerial photographer working in Britain today, while the most extensive aerial archive in the country is that of Aerofilms, with a huge number of pictures that date back to just after the First World War. The concept behind this fascinating new book is a simple one — to show the enormous changes that have taken place in London over the past 75 years or so by juxtaposing around 85 archive pictures from Aerofilms with 85 contemporary pictures by Jason Hawkes. Jason’s shots will be as near as possible from the same perspective and with the same crop as the earlier ones. It will be an extraordinary record of how some parts of London are changed in minor details only, whereas others, such as the City and Docklands, are barely recognisable.
Some info on how the book was made:
In 1919 a photographer flew over London and took some of the very first aerial photographs of the City. He went on to create a company called Aerofilms that is still in existence today. I had seen some of the old prints of London in the companies archive ad always thought that there was a great idea for a book. I had worked on two previous books of London, but this time wanted to use the old aerial views and on the facing page update them. Hopefully they would make a great juxtaposition showing the change that had taken place in the city over 80 years. I contacted a couple of editors and Harper Collins commissioned a book of “Over London”.
I spent a few very interesting days in the Aerofilms archive leafing through dusty folders of prints, some of which had not seen the light of day in many years. After editing them down to 80 images covering virtually all of London, I began the work of photographing the new images. Firstly I looked into which lenses I might have to use to correspond with the ones used back in 1919. They had shot all the images on 5x4 plate cameras and unfortunately no information was held on the length of lens used. In the end I worked with a selection of four different fixed focal lengths and one zoom to cover all eventualities. Prints had been made of the old images which I took up with me on each flight. It was amazing to see the change in most of the locations , but almost more amazing was that some were still identical with perhaps just one house being different. Most of the photography went pretty smoothly. We would fly to each location and once in a hover I would direct the pilot to the exact spot needed whilst looking at the print we had to work from. After spending two and a half hours flying round and round in circles, looking either through the lens or studying the photographs, it became pretty sick inducing and I was always glad to get back on the ground. We had one or two mishaps whilst working on the book. I had flown down to the East End of London to photograph some Docks in Wapping. We got to the location but there was nothing there that looked remotely like the photograph. I thought that perhaps the image had been captioned wrongly so we flew up and down the river looking for the right docks. It was a week later that whilst still researching where this image had been taken that a historian informed me that all the docks in the area had been filled in years before and housing estates built over them. Once we flew back you could just make out the pattern of the old dock walls underneath modern housing. It reminded me of shooting a book on Pre historic Britain where when the sun was low you could pick up the rings of Pre-historic forts in the landscape.
Aerial photography commissions & library.
http://www.jasonhawkes.com email: library@jasonhawkes.com
Tel : +44 (0) 118 9242946 Fax : +44 (0) 118 9242943
Jason has updated much of his aerial photographs of London this Summer. New aerial views cover most of Central London, including the City and Square mile, Isle of Dogs and the Development at Canary Wharf. New aerial photographs of the Swiss Re Tower, London Eye, Paddington and Paddington Basin, Battersea, Knightsbridge and Hyde Park / Kensington Gardens. Tower Bridge, Barbican, Ludgate, Old Bailey, Cheapside, Tate Modern and St Pauls.
