Mind the Gap: Amazon.co.uk: Simon James: Books

Amazon.co.uk Review

How many times have we heard the over-familiar words that give Simon James the title for his wonderful book of startling photographs? Mind the Gap, Michael Palin reminds us in his foreword, is also testimony to what the French philosopher Derrida would probably call a trace, an admission of error written into the very being of the tube. "Mind the Gap" means the trains don't quite fit the stations. Londoners, and all London's visitors, know the tube is synonymous with travelling the capital but is it merely a utilitarian thing that gets us from A to B, from home to work and hopefully back again? Simon James thinks not. He has paid a visit to every one of the tube's multi-fold stops and produced a book of beautiful, strangely haunting and empty, bright and colourful yet oddly nostalgic and gently melancholic photographs that entirely fulfil the photographers remit of making us look anew at the familiar and seeing it again for the first time through renewed eyes. James knows that if we look closely the tube does not actually quite fit our expectations of it, doesn't quite fit the image we have in our minds. He shows us history (surreally capturing a sign for a "Secret Nuclear Bunker") and often impressive architecture, suburban hinterlands and the proximity of the countryside (surely in most minds the tube's radical "other"), and reminisces about offices, platforms, walkways and cuttings. This is the tube as you've never thought you've seen it before. --Mark Thwaite

Product Description

With a foreword by Michael Palin, Mind the Gap is a warm, nostalgic, eccentric book about London’s tube lines, and particularly the ends of the lines – exotic destinations such as West Ruislip, Uxbridge, Upminster and Cockfosters.

Photographer and writer Simon James has visited every last one of these quasi-mythical places, capturing on film London’s suburban hinterland, that no-man’s-land that is not quite city nor countryside, but a utopian combination of both – with their overgrown railway cuttings, litter-free stations, time-warp parades of shops, indistinguishable Acacia Avenues, pipe-and-slippers ’30s architecture, and occasional, bizarre, even menacing incongruities – such as James’ photograph of the ‘Secret Nuclear Bunker’ near Chipping Ongar… Combined with numerous tube facts, figures and fantasies accumulated by the author on his travels, Mind the Gap is the book of the great unknown, the great adventure that awaits all Londoners.

Michael Palin has kindly agreed to write a foreword to Mind the Gap, and has authorised his name to be printed on its front. He is the perfect person to endorse the book, not just because its photographs are as amiable, quirky and English as he is, but also due to his status as a traveller of renown – not just on the obvious globe-trotting level, but also in his capacity as chairman of the pressure group Transport 2000.

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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

Mind The Gap - Review 9 Oct 2001

By "tspencerj"

Format:Hardcover

Windswept Barking, chilly Walthamstow and lonley city-limits at Epping, to name but a few of the melancholic, yet captivating portraits of the London Underground that Simon James has brought to us in his book. In between the rush hour, the tube network is taken over by whispers and echoes, which stretch out to the ends of the lines and remain in a world which, to some, only exists on the destination sign on the front of their train. Bizarrely, I have always had a nagging feeling to know what went on at Hainault and did Amersham have that Metroland look about it? Coming from the tubeless depths of Croydon, these questions have needed to be answered and Simon James has done just that. So, when you buy your one day travelcard to go shopping in Oxford Street, resist the temptation and stay on the train to Uxbridge or Ruislip and see the sights of suburbia, so often forgotten in the Zone 1 bias of tubeland.

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

More than pictures 13 Aug 2002

By "vincentjacques"

Simon is a naturally gifted photographer whose pictures reflect truly is vision of life.
In this case his vision of The Tube, a transport system that he shares with millions of commuters daily.
I was and still am fascinated by these beautiful pictures. I keep looking at them and memories flow back to me of some station I have used.
The colours perfectly well represent the reality of everyday life in the Tube; bright colours that bring a bit of life on a dull rainy day.
This is a must have for any Londonner...

A Great Book concerning a Great Network 29 Nov 2001

By A Customer

I am somewhat envious of Simon James because he has actually done what I have been wanting to do for many years. To visit the far-flung ends of the individual Tube-lines has been an unfulfilled ambition for me, but what a complete and gratifying job Simon James has made of it. His revealing photographs and interesting captions deliver a sense of awe and wonderment concerning the Tube network as a whole. One hopes that if anyone from his publishing house reads these reviews, then they will commission Simon James to cover the rest of the Tube system for another volume. A most thought-provoking book! Very well done!