In the 1980s Bob Mazzer worked as a porn cinema projectionist, first in King's Cross, then in Paddington. He lived for a while with his father in Manor House, and then got his own place in Archway. Naturally enough, he travelled to work by Tube, returning late at night, due to the nature of his job. "I felt the Tube was mine," he says, "and I was there to take pictures. It was like a party."
His first camera was a black enamel Leica M4, which he's kept, because, as he explains, "It is so beautiful. The enamel has worn off in places, and the brass shows through. It has a soft quality that modern cameras don't have. It's like an animal - you want to fondle it."
In the early days, the film he used was Kodachrome 25, a very slow film designed to be used in bright sunshine on the beach rather than in the subterranean depths. After it was shot, it was sent off to Kodak to be developed, and the roll was returned in little cardboard mounts in a box - with, very usefully, the date printed on the mounts.
Mazzer always had his camera with him and always took pictures but it wasn't until later he realised that what he was amassing was a collection with a theme. "You don t think you are starting a project, but one day you look back over your recent pictures and there are a dozen connected images, and you realise it is the beginning of a project - and then you fall in love with it," he says.
Bob now lives in Hastings and still uses the Tube when he comes to London - and he still takes his camera with him. Some of these pictures were first shown at a GLC exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall in the 1980s.
