Tempus fu**it: Aquarius recalled

So what kind of mementoes have been slumbering for more than half a decade in the dozen 80 litre removal cartons delivered (and emptied!) yesterday? A goodly few, to be sure.

This one has for me some significance. In April 1970 I was already looking for where to go next, after WifeOne walked out and London and the Swinging Sixties had become jaded.

When David Hamilton’s photo appeared on the cover of Twen it was seen as quite daring; this was not by any means a ‘top shelf’ publication. David I’d already met in London, while I was working with a designer/printer in Knightsbridge. We produced a poster calendar with an image from what would be the first of many Hamilton coffee table books, Dreams of a young girl, to be published in 1971.

At the time the photographer’s career was guided by a manager who happened to be German and who was instrumental in building his reputation to the level of success, particularly in Germany and France, established by the mid-seventies. It was then that I took on the job for the latter part of a decade which I remember fondly for many reasons. And my predecessor is my daughter’s god-mother, so we’re talking about a past even now very present.

As the magazine cover points out, it was the beginning of the Age of Aquarius… And what goes around comes around. I note with some pleasure that the fashions my daughter and her classmates are adopting this summer are highly reminiscent of those at the dawning of the age by the young girls in Hamilton’s photography.