Passport Photo Service: An Unexpected Archive of Celebrity Portraits

 

 

 

Would Bianca Jagger please remove her hat? It was 1976 and the photographer taking her picture was explaining that she wasn’t allowed to wear a hat for a passport photo. The British government won’t accept it. “They will for me,” Jagger replied sharply.

David Sharkey knew his trade. The former boxer from London’s East End and his wife Ann had founded Express Photos at 449 Oxford Street in London in 1953, once home to William Morris’s arts and crafts workshop.

There, the couple pioneered the slogan “ready in ten minutes”, signifying the fast portrait development service it offered, The shop was quicker than anyone else in the city thanks to their darkroom setup and an automatic Kodak Veribrom machine.

 

Located close to the former US embassy in Mayfair and in the heart of the city’s West End, many famous faces used their service. As a souvenir of a celebrity client, the Sharkeys would make a copy of the portrait and display it on the walls of their small shop. By the time the shop shut for good in 2019, the renamed Passport Photo Service had an archive of around 800 celebrity pictures.

 

 

The list of famous customers includes Jagger’s ex-husband, the Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger, who had his passport photo taken on the same day Bianca insisted on keeping her hat on, Sean Connery, Joan Collins, Tim Curry, Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Dockery, Stefan Edberg, Mia Farrow, Tom Ford, Stephen Fry, Lemmy, Little Richard, Ava Gardner, J. Paul Getty, Althea Gibson, Chrissie Hynde, Angelina Jolie, George Michael, Sting, Bobby Womack, Tilda Swinton, David Hockney, Katy Perry, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Madonna, Natalie Wood and Bill Murray. Muhammad Ali signed his pictures.

 

 

When the British actor Errol Flynn arrived, he “kicked open our door, placed his hands on his hips, puffed out his chest and announced to all, ‘Yep, it’s me’’’.

The magician Uri Geller bent a tea spoon while waiting for his prints. “We didn’t ask him to,” says Philip Sharkey, son of the studio’s founders. “It was our only spoon.”

 

Philip started working at the family business when he was 16 years old. “One customer told me she had brought in the singer Marvin Gaye in the 1970s when she worked for a record company,” he says. “He was apparently in a sorry state, having lost both his passport and his ID. When she went to the American embassy with him, the only way he could convince the officials of his identity was to sing for them.”

 

 

 

 

Passport Photo Service: An Unexpected Archive of Celebrity Portraits, by Philip Sharkey, is published by Phaidon.