Bristol Gardens runs between Formosa Street and Clifton Villas and in London’s Maida Vale. Artist and photographer Sheila Burnett has not longed moved to the area when she began to take pictures of the people who lived and worked there.
In the 1970s, Sheila arrived in London from her naive Birmingham to work as an Illustrator in Fleet Street, the heart of the then thriving British newspaper business. She joined the touring Pip Simmons Theatre Group run by the experimental British theatre director Philip (Pip) Simmons (1 December 1943 – 24 January 2024), an experience that led her into a career as a photographer specialising in production photography for theatre, actors’ headshots, site-specific installations, and all projects related to the arts. Her archive is a treasure trove which can be viewed here.
You can enjoy her terrific work in two books of her Maida Vale series on sale at Cafe Royal.
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