Andrew Kay: Snap

A picture paints a thousand words …

Anyone who sees me on Facebook will no doubt have seen that I have a new profile pic. Well not new exactly new but rather old, at least 35 years old. I received a request from an old friend, someone who I had not seen for years and years, and after chatting for a while he said that he had a picture of me from back then and that he would send it. I was fascinated as back then we did not have digital cameras and certainly not phones with cameras built in. A photograph back then took effort, it took work and unlike today, where we snap away like loons, a photograph was something special.

After a short while the picture arrived and to say that it was special would be seriously understating the facts. I thought it might have been a snapshot, me at a party or at a launch event from my book publishing days. Far from it, this was a studio shot that had taken time to do, a time that I remember well.
The friend said that he was embarrassed at not being able to remember the name of the photographer who had given him the picture. It took me a few moments’ reflection to place it but I knew it would come to me and after a few minutes it did. The picture was taken by my friend Tony, and sadly Tony was taken by AIDS, many years back when there was no medication that would keep him alive.

Tony was a fun friend, a hairdresser by day and a very good photographer in his spare time. I remember his poignant portraits of his mother, images that captured a sadness as well as a serenity. I’m not sure that these are qualities that he captured in me.
What he did capture though was a mood of the time – and the fact that I was a lot thinner back then.

We did the pictures at his home in Brixton and he asked me to bring along a selection of my favourite clothes. Well I’m not a conventional dresser now and back then I was even more outré. Tony selected the flouncy shirt with huge sleeves and frilled cuffs and a lace edged jabot. They were amongst my favourites and you might think that I wore them for parties and clubbing. In fact I wore them to work, and one day, cycling over Lambeth Bridge, I was spotted by a German coach full of youngsters who caused the vehicle to lurch across two lanes as they all piled to one side to view the spectacle of me caught by the wind and looking like a huge frilled jelly fish riding a racing bike. Happy days.
Anyway, thank you David for sharing this with me and bringing back both happy and sad memories, and thank you Tony for capturing that time so well.