I stand killing time on the platform of one of Croydon’s many decrepit railway stations. Like me, it’s seen better days, and again like me, its makeover has been on the cards for years. I do a lot of waiting and thinking here, mostly enforced. Norwood Junction: even the name sounds like a line from “The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin,” where, just like in the sitcom, the trains never seem to run on time.
I’m snapped out of my daydreaming by the mind-bendingly delicious scent of pimento wood. With that and the screech of the squabbling parrots, I could be anywhere but the platform of a suburban station. I’ll chalk that up as a win for Croydon.
Almost unbelievably, the aroma originates from The Original Tasty Jerk LTD. If you think the name’s a mouthful, try the pork – it’s amazing. It’s a long waft, and a good ten-minute walk away at my stately sexagenarian pace, nestled next to Selhurst Park stadium. Walk, you say. Walk! Are you mad? Isn’t that a dangerous pursuit in these here parts? I’ve been told that more than once, advised that I’m taking my life into my own hands. Until we first came under attack during one assignment to Iraq, I used to joke that I’d heard more gunfire around here. But the area is on the way up.
A brutalist building in croydon
Sure, it’s had its moments, but no more than any other carton of spicy London. I’ve seen circling air ambulances and hovering copper choppers. I recall the tributes and flowers, testaments to luck and timing, and walk on by.
It’s here the stylised fantasy of Guy Ritchie’s “The Gentlemen” collides with the realities of the real metropolitan world. Range Rovers shy from quad bikes sans number plates and helmets — the only acceptable headgear on these mean streets are balaclavas. But they stay out of my world and I steer clear of theirs.
Now, as my coworkers and partner will attest, I’m not the most positive of individuals. Optimism is not my superpower. And that, my friend, is at the core of the eternal dichotomy posed by photography. How can a pessimist ever keep on pressing the shutter? As Einstein never said, ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’ But that’s what we do. And every press is as unique as the resulting image. Perhaps photographers are masochists at heart?
I keep on snapping, for I am, to my soul, a photographer. I adore taking my kind of photographs, capturing my view of the world. And that dedication needs superhuman reservoirs of hope, hence that paradox. You never think of your last picture, only your next. Hoping it will be better. What you have already captured is ephemeral; you live only for the chase. So why am I telling you this? Well, those of us who fish for light in the rivers of life need a stream of opportunities. Croydon is such a river. A mighty one.
To those who say the best thing to come out of Croydon is the X68, my retort is: get off that bus and take a hike. If you do, you’ll be walking in some big footsteps: Kate Moss, Stormzy, Raymond Chandler, Captain Sensible, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Experience what a wonderfully diverse patchwork of peoples, races, colours, languages, faiths, and cultures this part of South London has become. Welcome to the multicultural experiment in action – you may even go your whole ramble, without once hearing English spoken.
If your idea of paradise is suburbia with a slice of Caribbean; rabbiting Russians, a smattering of Polish, a smidgen of Somali, gushes of Gujarati, hints of Hindi, a tinge of Turkish and so many languages I don’t even recognise, then Croydon is a right royal cocktail.
A brutalist building in croydon
It’s an architectural gumbo too; a clash of contradicting styles juxtaposed with some of the best brutalist architecture in the land. If, like me, you love such “carbuncles,” this is Eden. Beautifully brutal concrete office blocks surge from the ground, like mighty rocket ships leaving the earth. They’re a world away from the insidious, identikit, ticky-tacky little boxes of the landlocked “Harbourside” apartments that have sprung up, architectural locusts consuming every corner plot in their path.
A random mishmash quilt of humanity hides in camouflaged cubist high-rise blocks that dominate the skyline like sculptured termite mounds and contain almost as many occupants; the not quite affordable housing for the Oompa Loompas of our economy like me. The steel and glass monoliths that reflect Croydon like some surrealist nightmare are an artist’s dream.
I accept that the area has a funky dystopian vibe: another contradiction. Perhaps this all had a subliminal impact on Terry Gilliam, since the terrifying torture chamber scene in “Brazil” was filmed in the interior of one of the giant cooling towers of Croydon Power Station. Now demolished, it is home to another source of torment in the form of flat-packed furniture as the Croydon Ikea now occupies the site. Croydon could be the landscape of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” yet it reminds me more of Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner”.
A brutalist building in croydon
No surprise then that Delta Point, the old BT building where (allegedly) government agents once sat listening in on your calls, doubles as Gotham General Hospital in the Batman movie “The Dark Knight Rises”. The seemingly unplanned topography is both a hodgepodge and a kaleidoscope. They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I love it. Love it. Love it.
But perhaps trying to find logic in this exotic universe is just an exercise in absurdism. It’s a long way from Bideford, the town of my birth, and a million miles apart in attitudes and social niceties. Yet I feel more at home here than I ever did in Devon.