Passport Photo Service: An Unexpected Archive of Celebrity Portraits features 300 never-before-seen celebrity images from its archive, from Mick Jagger to Arnold Schwarzenegger
When an ex-boxer overheard an angry American’s gripes about being unable to get a passport photo in time to fly home the next day, he had a lightbulb moment. David Sharkey had been honing his photographic skills since the late 1940s, when he sold his ration books and bought a Leica camera, becoming a ‘smudge,’ snapping tourists in London’s Trafalgar Square. The derogatory moniker came from complaints when tourists failed to receive their photos and were allegedly told by errant lensmen that their addresses had been ‘smudged’ in the rain.
But there would be none of that in David’s new venture. It was 1953 and, spotting a gap in the market, after his encounter with the angry man from the US in Wolfe’s Coffee House in the West End, quicker than you could say ‘cheese,’ he’d set up Express Photos on Oxford Street.
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Moving in 1957 to number 449 under the new name, Passport Photo Service, it was bang opposite Selfridges and less than a minute’s walk from the US, Canadian and Japanese embassies. The prime site provided plenty of trade from people seeking passport photos, visas and green cards.
And during the 66 years the business operated as a family venture – finally closing in 2019 – more than 800 of its thousands of customers were celebrities, stars of the stage, screen and sport. Now a new book – Passport Photo Service: An Unexpected Archive of Celebrity Portraits – by the son of the photo shop’s founder, Philip Sharkey, who joined the business aged 16, features 300 never-before-seen celebrity images from its archive.
The first photo service in London promising to be “ready in 10 minutes,” David made the venture a family affair. Himself a former East End boxer, he was married to Ann, a professional dancer, who quit to become the receptionist; while her brother, Peter, joined their ranks when he was just 15 – and Philip entered the family firm, aged 16, in 1973.
Cited above the ground floor, so not immediately visible, they used sandwich board men, who walked up and down Oxford Street advertising them in all weathers. Philip, 68, says: “We had never missed a day of trading, not even when the IRA bombed Selfridges in December 1974.” Every country had its own specifications and rules regarding passport and visa photos and they catered to them all, diligently taking and developing photos in what had once been Arts and Crafts movement pioneer William Morris’s workshop.
Philip remembers one customer’s disbelief when he saw the shop’s wall of fame, where they mounted frames filled with celebrity images. The man exclaimed: “Muhammad Ali, Joan Collins, Mick Jagger, Arnold Schwarzenegger, I don’t believe you’ve photographed all these famous people!”
Philip had become used to such protestations. He recalls: “One ordinary Saturday in 1987, a customer was scrutinizing the three large frames full of celebrity passport photos that hung on the wall. Tutting and shaking his head, he – like other customers before him – expressed disbelief that they had all come to us. A lady in her early 60s, dressed casually and sporting a large pair of glasses, replied ‘well, everybody needs a passport, so they have to have somewhere to go to be photographed. After the gentleman had left, Ava Gardner looked up at me with a smile. ‘I don’t think I convinced him,’ she said.’”
Philip’s book is like a social history, with stars from Madonna, and Mick Jagger to Angelina Jolie, Sean Connery, Kate Winslet, Tilda Swinton, Alex Guinness, Marty Feldman, Dudley Moore and David Hockney all featured. He laughs, recalling a visit from famous cutlery bender, Uri Geller, who bent the studio spoon, saying: “We didn’t ask him to. It was our only spoon.”
Described as feeling like “a special kind of club,” by Stephen Fry, some of the studio’s photos are particularly thought-provoking. Take the passport photo of Nancy Spungen, snapped on 10 August, 1978. The American girlfriend of Sex Pistols star Sid Vicious, she was found dead in the couple’s bathroom at New York’s Chelsea Hotel – stabbed in the abdomen – aged just 20, on 12 October. Vicious was charged with her murder, but died of a heroin overdose while on bail in February 1979, aged 21.
Philip says: “Sid Vicious’s girlfriend came in for what would be her last passport photo. Tragically, she was killed two months later. She was originally wearing a badge that read ‘I’m a McLaren puppet’ which I suggested she take off for her photo.”
Of the great and the good who posed for the Passport Photo Service, one of the most memorable was undoubtedly Muhammad Ali, in 1974. Philip says he “stopped by on his way to fight George Foreman in The Rumble in the Jungle.” He’d flown into Britain without a passport and needed one – much to former boxer David’s delight. As they talked about the sport, Ali said to the photographer: “All those fights and you’re almost as pretty as me!” Ali then ordered multiple prints and autographed them for all the customers in the queue.
When he saw David’s wall of fame, he said: “Take all those down and just have one picture of me, I am the greatest!” The studio moved for a final time to new premises nearby in 2014. Business faded and it closed its doors for good in 2019, after the US embassy moved across the Thames to Nine Elms, which Philip describes as the “final nail in the coffin.” Luckily, his book keeps the extraordinary story of the studio alive. In the words of Stephen Fry: “This wonderfully produced memoir vividly brings back to life a vanished time in the capital. Delicious.”
*Passport Photo Service: An Unexpected Archive of Celebrity Portraits by Philip Sharkey is published by Phaidon, £19.95 (Phaidon.com)
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