Market Photos

Hi Clive, can't wait to buy the book & try to see your exhibition. My dad was Ernie Summers a Covent Garden Porter like his father before him. My mum saw your work on TV yesterday & it bought many memories back for her. & you never know there may even be a photo of my dad amongst them!

Covent Garden was for centuries home to London’s central fruit and vegetable and flower markets. While today’s stalls sell pashminas and windchimes, until 1974 it was the city’s larder - with a close community of longstanding family traders. Photographer Clive Boursnell captured these last days of the market over a period of six years, from 1968 until the market’s closure, in a series of beautiful portraits of the feisty life of a city institution. Out of view for 35 years, they have now been published in a new book. These images offer a small taste from a singularly rich archive.
guardian.co.uk, 11 June 2008

I can recall no volume that has had such a powerful Proustian effect on me as the new photo book Covent Garden by Clive Boursnell. "New" might not be quite the right word here, for the transporting images were captured between 1968 and 1974, when the market was still full of tumult and tomatoes, and forgotten by Boursnell for 30-odd years. I worked on the fringe of the market for some of this period. From the moment I opened the book, I was hurtled – whoosh! – back across the decades.
Christopher Hirst, The Independent, 28 June 2008

...what is remarkable about Boursnell's photographs is that the routine acts of life – the shouting, the smoking, the errands and conversations of the market traders and their customers – are revealed as being full of grace, drama, humour and surprise, as though the Covent Garden street market were a stage and its occupants all actors, orators and dancers.
Joanna Pitman, The Times T2, 16 June 2008

This is not only a fascinating book...it is an act of photographic salvage and a very valuable historic record...What Boursnell succeeded in doing was not just capturing the character of the place and its people in its final years, but in ennobling it. His aim was not to depict squalor but the life that triumphs over squalor. To paint with light, as all the best photographers do. Now the images have also been digitised, so the record is doubly preserved. For my money, Boursnell's work is as valuable as that of Walter Sickert, who painted the music halls and prostitutes of Edwardian London with equally obsessive eye."
Hugh Pearman, Design Week, 4 June 2008

Hello Clive

I just wanted to thank you for your wonderful work on the Covent Garden Market book my family and I had a lovely day looking at the Exhibition memories.

My Grandad was Jimmy Mole featured in the photos and you have given me something very special by showing your work to the world because I was born in 1973 and my life began with the Market porters turning up at the hospital very merry to see Jimmy’s 1st born Grandchild with Flower, fruit and bonds.
I have fond memories of Grandad Mole coming home with the cotchell goodies sometimes helping him empty the big brown bag and watching Grandad make his veggie soups but never ever dreamed of getting to see photos of the work place so from the bottom of my heart thank you so much for these truly fabulous pictures as now I can see what my Grandad did all his life with his Brothers, Cousins and friends.

Kindest Regards

Debbie (Jimmy Moles Grandaughter)

Wonderful photos and a fantastic book!