The derivation of King's Cross

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Unlike many names in Britain that of King's Cross is of relatively short standing - less than two hundred years old. However, the site of King's Cross has carried more than one name, and the oldest of these goes back around thousand years.

Unsurprisingly King's Cross refers to a king and a cross roads. In fact, a statue of King George IV stood at the crossroads from 1830 to 1845. It wasn't much of a statue apparently, a double life-size figure on a sixty foot column at the top of which was a camera obscura and at the base, a building. All of this was made cheaply of brick, even the statue, though the latter was coated to resemble stone. The building in the base of the column was initially a police station and later became a pub.

As with many areas of London, the site was once a village, here called Battlebridge, and was sited at a crossing of the River Fleet. A name such as this at a location of this kind would normally arise from an actual event, and it has been suggested, though with only slight evidence, that the battle was one that took place around 60AD between the Iceni led by Boudica and the Roman army. Today King's Cross is known as a district of London and widely for the main line railway terminus of that name that stands only a few yards from another such terminus, St Pancras - hence the name in today's photograph shot one early evening a few weeks ago.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: King's Cross, St Pancras and the Underground, London
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm (34mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.5
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO:500
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Piranesi and the London Underground

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London's "Tube", more properly known as the Underground, is an interesting place for the photographer because it is a metro system that has developed over such a long period of time and therefore offers subjects old and new. In fact, it includes the world's first underground line that was developed by the Metropolitan Railway and opened as long ago as 1863. The Underground is a system that, despite having 270 stations and 250 miles of track, is still being extended and consequently has a number of sleek, modern stations to contrast with the older structures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The other week I used a couple of these recent stations - Canada Water and Canary Wharf - both examples of what I call the "stainless steel" stations. I think of them in those terms because they feature large quantities of stainless steel alongside the inevitable concrete. However, modern and gleaming though they undoubtedly are, I also cannot help but think of them as "Piranesian". That word is an adjective especially familiar to students of the history of art and architecture. It derives from the name of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778), an Italian etcher and engraver born near Venice. He started out as an illustrator of contemporary views, moving on to studies of the remains of ancient Rome that he drew with an obvious delight in old stonework and the contrast of Mediterranean light and shade.

However, it a series of sixteen drawings from his imagination for which posterity remembers Piranesi, works that fired the imagination of the Romantic movement and inspired a number of architects. These showed the interiors of imaginary prisons, "Carceri d'Invenzione". In high contrast he depicted gigantic stone vaults, stairs, machines, ladders, chains and ropes and crawling about these fantastic, cavernous interiors, tiny people, dwarfed by their surroundings. Looking at today's black and white photograph of the exit hall and escalators at Canary Wharf underground station you can perhaps understand how Foster + Partners' work conjures up in my mind this inspirational draughtsman's imaginings.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Travelators and the future

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I've commented elsewhere about how the twenty-first century future, as predicted in the forward-looking 1960s, hasn't worked out quite as forecast. We aren't yet eating our meals from toothpaste-like tubes, routinely travelling in our flying cars, wearing jump-suits (despite the passing fad of onesies) or holidaying in space. Of course, much that wasn't foreseen has come to pass in the form of ubiquitous hand-held computers, the world wide web, the resurgence of interest in crafts and hand-made objects etc.

However, every now and then I have felt that those seers of fifty years ago hit a few bulls-eyes. In fact, I experience it each time I use the travelator (a horizontal escalator) between the Jubilee and Northern Line platforms at Waterloo on the London Underground. During the 1960s my idea of what the future held tended to come from children's comics, films or TV programmes set in the future, or "Tommorrow's World", a weekly series looking at inventions, that began on the BBC in 1965. Travelators were frequently presented as the future of city centre transit. However, on my most recent visit to London, when we once again used the travelator, I didn't have that feeling of experiencing the future. Why? Because a few weeks ago I discovered that the only other travelator on the London Underground, at Bank tube station, began running in 1960 and had its fiftieth anniversary in 2010. In the 1960s, as far as Britain goes, travelators (then spelt travolator) in the 1960s were the cutting-edge present, not the future! What wasn't predicted at the time was that airports would be the place where travelators would find greatest use.

Today's photograph shows the converging lines of Waterloo's 140 metres (460 feet) moving walkway. It also shows a favourite game of parents and children when using the system - a race between the small child on the moving travelator and their parent walking along the non-moving central section.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/30 sec
ISO: 320
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The London Underground roundel

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There is a great temptation for companies to update their company name and logo to better reflect the times. If you look at companies as disparate as Shell, BP, Coca Cola, British Airways, Lego or Ford you can see a clear difference between the original logo and that of today, often with intervening versions along the way.

Companies that stick to their original logo or way of presenting their company name are fewer. Why is this? Could it be that they don't want, in some way, to dilute or muddy their brand by departing from what is tried, tested and successful? Or is it that they think they have found a design upon which improvement is impossible? BMW is an example of a company whose logo has changed little since its inception around 1920. The linked letter Cs of Chanel have also remained the same since the design was conceived by Coco Chanel in 1925.

A further example of a long-lasting logo is that of London Underground. The red roundel with a blue bar across upon which are the white letters - either "UNDERGROUND" or a station name - dates from 1908. There is the suggestion that it was adapted from the wheel with a bar across it used by the London General Omnibus Company in the nineteenth century. However, what is known is that a slight variation of the present design with the word "Underground" presented thus - UNDERGROUND  - was first used in 1908 and that in 1919 Edward Johnston designed a sans serif typeface with all letters the same height for use throughout the London Underground, including on the roundel. It has remained the same since that time. The Transport for London (TfL) subsidiary, London Overground, adapted the roundel for its use, as did , London Buses  (also a TfL subsidiary). All three logos can be seen on this sign near the determinedly modern Canada Water Library in London.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On 

Charing Cross escalators

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Just over a month ago - October 4th to be precise - it was the 100th anniversary of the opening of the first escalator on the London Underground. The two machines that linked the Piccadilly and District/Circle Lines  underwent a one month trial period to establish their safety. They must have passed because between 1911 and 1915 another 22 were installed. Today the network has 422.

I've always been fascinated by the London Underground escalators. Although they all work on essentially the same principles and look pretty similar architects have frequently sought to inject difference through the surrounding architecture and decor. I was impressed by the totally stainless steel aesthetic of Canada Water station when I first saw it. Recently I passed the escalators at Charing Cross (above) and enjoyed their big circles and the mirrors that played tricks with the space. In fact, looking at these examples I felt transported into Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" or perhaps Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner". I definitely got the feeling that the architect (Terry Farrell) had been inspired by cinematic visions of the future when it came to the look at this station.

Incidentally, I'm the only person in this image with the time and inclination to stop, stand and stare. And perhaps one of a minority who was wondering whether it really is possible to fall down an up escalator for half an hour, as the old joke has it.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/20
ISO: 1600
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

London portraits

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Eyes on the pavement, rucksack on his back, deep in his own thoughts and oblivious of the faces he is passing, this Londoner is typical of many city dwellers searching for a little solitude as they go about their business among the din and bustle of the capital's streets. And who can blame him: raise your eyes, look about and you can be overwhelmed by visual stimulation. Yet there must be times when, even in a city that changes with  the rapidity of London, the daily grind becomes monotonous, and the same routes, scenes, sounds and events become depressing, or even oppressive. Perhaps countering this is one of the motivations for the street art that various organisations fund.

Today's image shows a hoarding (billboard) with reproductions of individual portrait sketches of real people that was initiated by London Underground. The city's mass-transit system has a long and honourable tradition of giving London good design, art and architecture - from the elegant simplicity of the Tube Map, the iconic company logo and innovative station architecture that arose under Frank Pick's tenure as Managing Director in the pre-WW2 years, to the sponsored art of today, the London Undergound has been a  force for good in the built environment.

The photograph above shows portraits of staff of the organisation drawn by Dryden Goodwin. They are a selection from the sixty that he did as part of the "Linear" project commissioned by Art on the Underground. For more details see here.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 90mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On