Photographic reflections of student life at Goldsmiths’ College in the late 1960s.
This book gives me an enormous pleasure as it finally presents the best of my images taken from 1967 as a student in Raymont Hall, to 1971 when I started teaching. They were selected from about a thousand images, the majority of which were never printed due to the high cost for an impoverished student at the time, whose spare money was saved for petrol, tobacco and beer! I can still recall making contact sheets with Bob Portway (courtesy of the Art Department’s dark room) in order to save money, as we could make 36 images fit neatly onto an A4 sheet.
The idea of producing this book was seeded following an exhibition of some of these pictures at the 2008 Reunion, because so many people enjoyed them and wanted to know what I planned to do with them.
This collection covers a period of privileged educational opportunity. Every time I look at these images they take me back to the experiences of real friendships that have endured over the decades, even though we may not have met many times since I left London in 1975 to teach in Wiltshire. It gives a nostalgic reflection of the late 60s and early 70s, and also encapsulates a unique period of art, music, history, politics and changes in education, showing the people and surroundings.
I hope you enjoy this look back to our student days at Goldsmiths’ and the London of that time, and the recollections of fellow students who have contributed to this rich social account. For the sceptics and generations from a different era, these images prove that we were there and that was ‘The way we were!’.
