The feel of the city

Original editions of this 1969 book can cost hundreds of pounds on the rare book market but as Martin Parr says in his introduction: So now the cat is out of the bag and the book is now known and appreciated by a London audience.

I regard the contents as a visual stream of consciousness photobook. The presentation is much more graphic than photographic, most of the images have a very reduced tonal quality, some are cutouts, pages have tear shapes either of photos or black panels, images butt together and huge grainy blow-ups reveal Butturin's view of London at the end of the swinging sixties. I wonder how far he was influenced by Klein's famous photobook 'Life is good & good for you in New York' because the presentation is very similar.

There are no captions to the photos and with so many close-ups of people's faces the only real indication that everything was shot in London are a few photos of the Underground, the head of a Horse Guard, a bowler hatted gent but if this book was shown to most people and they were asked to identify the city, without revealing the book's title, I bet London would be at the top of the list. Without doubt it has the feel of London.