From today until March 11 Leica is hosting an exhibition of Bob Mazzer’s extraordinary “Underground” collection in the gallery above the Royal Exchange Leica store at Bank. Bob carried a Leica M4 around the London Underground network for four decades, creating unforgettable images as he made his way to and from work.
Bob Mazzer is a social documentary photographer born in the Jack the Ripper’s stomping ground of Whitechapel in East London. He got his first camera for his Bar Mitzvah at the age of thirteen: An Ilford Sporty and he has been snapping away ever since. The Tube became one of his major themes. As he says:
I feel compelled to take photographs on the tube and I cannot travel without a camera because I cannot bear the thought I might miss something. If you love people, I think they respond to that and find it perfectly natural to be photographed. I love taking photographs of people on the tube, I say to them, “You look fantastic, can I take your picture?” and they say, “Yes.”
Nevertheless, Mazzer did not intend the Undergound photos to be a “project”: “They were just pictures taken in an interesting environment on my journeys around London, but I always knew there was something significant and special about the images from that atmospheric location.”
Leica says that the exhibition photographs, all taken with a Leica M4 and 35mm lens, are beautifully printed on Hahnemühle archival paper, so that in years to come they will provide an even more intriguing and mysterious window into the past.
The exhibition opens today and continues until March 11, Monday to Friday between 9 am and 6 pm. There is no admission fee. You can find the Leica Store at the rear of the Royal Exchange building at No. 18, nearest Underground station is Bank.