London Drivers In The 1980s – Photos by Chris Dorley-Brown

The cars, colours, haircuts and expressions of frustration capture the mood and tone of a unique era in Thatcher's Britain.

 

In the mid 1980, Chris Dorley-Brown, whose family has lived in Hackney and Bethnal Green for nearly 200 years, photographed drivers stuck in traffic jams in and around East London. The cars, colours, haircuts and scenes take us back. The moped rider doing The Knowledge in the hope of becoming a Black Cab driver in those halcyon pre-SatNav Uber days; door handles with keyhole locks; a driver wearing those huge oversized glasses (aka ‘bins) you only now see on the very aged; and British Telecom in yellow vans. “I could get close, very close, they were sitting ducks,” Dorley-Brown writes in the foreword to his book, Drivers in the 1980s.

 

 

 

 

Drivers In The 1980s by Chris Dorley Brown is published by Hoxton Mini Press – and can be purchased here.

 

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