Hampstead – ARKS, ADAM AND AXARQUIA

ADAM’S NORTH LONDON…

April 18, 2025April 19, 2025 by adamhalevi, posted in Adam and Dido, Adam Green, Alfa Romeo GTV, Covent Garden, Dido Nicholson, Edgware, Hampstead, Hendon, Holly Bush Pub, Jewish Households, Kiddush, London, London Mews, Marylebone Town Hall, Mural Painting, North London, North London Suburbia, Primrose Hill, Regent's Canal, Rosh Pinah Primary School, Saint Martin's School of Art, Soho (London), West Hampstead

the end of a close 65-year relationship*

Last month we sold our little flat in Hampstead, North London. In and of itself, not exactly an earth-shattering event, but in the context of my life, an extraordinary moment. The reason being, that for the first time in my then-64 years and 11 months I no-longer had even a toe-hold in the city of my birth.

Regular readers of these posts will know that I have always endeavoured to keep my blog as free from controversial subjects as possible, despite the fact – as those who know me well can testify – I am highly politically aware with a range of opinions, some strongly held.

Given the recent and current state of the world, this policy has not always been easy, but this blog, originally intended to publicise my books and my art, is not a forum I wish to use for expressing my views on putting the world to rights. Ultimately, from my own experience of sampling and following other people’s politicized sites, one inevitably ends up with a corrosive and destructive clash of echo chambers. Thus, our reasons for leaving London will remain known to only our intimates.

Presented here is a photo-record of the first 30 years of my own personal London life (several suitably grainy and scarred), from times past, when I could never have dreamed that I would ever cut my ties with my once-beloved city “north of the river”.

I was born in Edgware, in the county of Middlesex in 1960, strictly speaking, before it became part of Greater London. Famous for its eponymous Roman road, as the composer Handel’s temporary home, and being at the end of the Northern Line Tube, it was where I grew up. This picture shows me as a baby, with my mum, Hannah, older brother Michael and my great auntie Ray at my grandparents flat…

*My final day at nursery in 1963 with my mum (left) and a friend. I seem to be clutching a postcard though I have no idea who from…*

Apart from a bout of glandular fever when I was six, my childhood was exceptionally happy. Although my father had departed the scene when I was a babe-in-arms, my little family was a more than adequate compensation for his absence. Here we have Hannah and her parents, Becky and Harry, me and my brother Michael (my uncle Sidney took the picture), in my first home…

*Purim at my primary school. I’m a rather lame-looking Robin Hood sat between cowboys and GI’s*…

Between the War and my birth, my mum’s family lived in Hendon. Many of our closest family friends remained there, and this is Michael and I during a visit to one of them. We’re sitting on the bonnet of mum’s first Ford Anglia – eat your heart out, Harry Potter!

*We took our snowmen very seriously back then*…

*Our second house in Edgware had a large back garden and by “London-clay” standards, half-decent soil. Sidney and I were both keen gardeners, something I remain to this day…*

My studio space at Saint Martin’s, with friends and fellow students. The guy on the far left is my lifelong friend Simon – not an artist, just visiting. Next to him, looking at the camera is Robert, a hugely gifted portraitist, and the girl is Piyawan, another very talented painter and cartoonist. Judging by the coats, this was at the end of the day and when we would typically be preparing for a visit to one of the many local Soho pubs…

*My final act at St. Martin’s was to undertake this temporary mural commission (I describe the story here) in James Street, Covent Garden*…

My grandparents were moderately observant Jews (outside the Haredi communities – and even they differ from one another – there are as many nuances and degrees of “observant” as there are Jews who observe), and the traditional Shabbat supper was always partaken of. Here I’m “making Kiddush” (the blessing over wine) on one such occasion. By this time we had left Edgware and moved to West Hampstead, also North London, but closer to the centre…

*I lived at home (in West Hampstead) well into my late 20’s, and this was my painting studio, which we built at the end of the garden…*

I met my future wife, Dido Nicholson, in 1988 and we married two years later. This was her cute little mews house in Lancaster Gate, close to Paddington Station and Hyde Park. She inherited the Alfa GTV from her uncle Leonard, who sadly died while playing real tennis at Lords (the “HQ” of world cricket)...

Dido and I were married at Marylebone Registry office, attended by her parents, my mum and Sidney, and of course, our maid of honour, our best friend Aura, looking unusually sheepish for a large sheepdog…

*Like most Londoners, I was rarely happier than when visiting one of my local pubs, like the Holly Bush, here in Hampstead, which has turned out to be our final London Address…*

*A melancholic New-Years-Day scene on the tow-path of the Regent’s Park, one of our favourite regular walks, and a fitting image to end this homage to a lost city.*

The title picture is the top of Primrose Hill. It offers, arguably, the best view of London from north-west of the city. I always found the scene somehow reassuring, and no more so than one misty autumn morning in 2010, when my mother had just left for the airport on her way to Dignitas.

SIDNEY – A Tribute: part 2

February 7, 2025March 10, 2025 by adamhalevi, posted in Advertising, Bill Young, advertising, Black and White Photography, Commercial Photography, Family Portrait, Gerald Green, Hampstead, Hannah Green, Michael Green, Portrait Photography, Sidney Pizan

A portrait of a family

Around late 1959, early 1960, my father, Gerry Green and his business partner, Bill Young launched out on their own as an advertising partnership. They had plenty of contacts in the industry and thus plenty of work, but soon found that the price of good photographers was prohibitive to the success of their burgeoning venture.

Fortunately, Gerry’s brother-in-law, Sidney Pizan, in addition to being a dentist, was a talented amateur photographer, and when approached was open to the idea of trying his hand at applying his skills commercially.

Sidney took to advertising photography like a duck to water, and within a few months, had established himself in Hampstead (in north London) as a professional photographer, getting more work – both from Gerry and Bill, and his growing string of contacts – than he could manage alone. Before long Sidney began recruiting other young aspiring photographers, apprentices and assistants to help him carry the workload and run his business. “The Studio”, as it was known, became something of a commercial photography academy, founding not only Sidney’s career, but those of a string of gifted colleagues.

In my next part of this tribute to my late uncle, I will go into more detail regarding Sidney and his team’s output of fabulous advertising images, but for Sidney himself, despite his success, his greatest creative enjoyment remained his “free” or “casual photography”.

Presented below are some of his best pictures, all of his family (particularly my mother – his sister – Hannah, my older brother Michael and I). If this seems a tad narcissistic on my part, I should point out, that we – his parents, and us – were the epicentre of his life, outside of his professional lives – and were, in a very real sense, his photographic muses. In those days, when out and about or when visiting the Studio , I can’t remember a time when Sidney did not have his trusty Rolleiflex hanging from his neck and him pointing it in our direction. Narcissistic or not, these images are moody, emotive, sensitive, an intimate family portrait, and just a damn brilliant illustration of the photographic portraiture and human study at its very best…

*Sidney’s sister (my mum) Hannah, taken in 1960, shortly after being deserted by my father (Gerry the advertising man). I love the way this shot captures her sad dignity…*

*Sidney’s nephew (my big brother), Michael, in from the garden for a snack…*

*Hannah at Adelboden (Bernese Oberland, Switzerland, and much used in Bond films) – our first family holiday abroad in 1962…*

*Hannah with me in the South of France…*

After Sidney retired from commercial photography (in 1975), he turned the studio itself into an up-market picture framery. This was the last photo he ever took of Michael (right) and I together, working in the framery – about 1985.

WALKING AWAY – or the ephemeral nature of being

February 14, 2017September 18, 2024 by adamhalevi, posted in Adam and Dido, Art, Art Photography, Digital Art, Edgware, Ein Kerem, Hampstead, Hampstead Heath, Israel, Little Rock, Oxford, Tel Hai

The image of someone walking away into the distance has stirred my artistic sensibilities since early adulthood. I’ve returned to the subject photographically and in paint pretty regularly since about 1979, from when the first picture presented here dates (Astrud at Tel Hai).

Several of these pictures are of loved ones, past and current, walking into a variety of landscapes, urban and open, and I guess that with them in particular, powerful feelings of vulnerability, both as partners and individuals are aroused.

Two of the photos here have special poignancy: The one of my mother Hannah with my grandfather Harry was taken on a stroll in my home town of Edgware in the early 80’s when they both still had many years to live. I took the photo on my old Canonette camera by accident. I was meaning to line up a shot of the lake we were passing when I must have clicked the shutter too early. It was only when the film came back from the developers that I saw the photo, and even then I instantly realised that it was a happy accident in that it had somehow captured the essence of them and their relationship in a way that no face-on portrait ever could have matched. The fact they are both now dead has made this image increasingly precious to me as the years have passed. The picture of my wife Dido walking her old and frail father into his house in Little Rock is even more poignant in that it represents the last photo of them ever taken together. About an hour later we returned to the airport, never to see him again.

All the pictures here, even those of total strangers, like the chap on Hampstead Heath, have a quiet melancholia about them in that they share a sense of our human transience.

PHOTO-CURIOS

January 14, 2016January 15, 2016 by adamhalevi, posted in Adam Green, Alcazar Garden, Art Photography, Coimbatore, Ein Hod, Greetings Cards, Hampstead, Regent's Canal, Seville, Sherwood Forrest, Uncategorized

I’ve been making greetings card designs and images for decades now – initially doing freelance work for greetings card companies and poster publishers and more recently producing images for my own Moody By Nature label. Over the years I’ve done everything from cartoon smut (professionally referred to as “erotic humour”) to soppy Christmas and birthday penguins and polar bears (yes, you can probably blame me for the proliferation of penguin cards from the 90’s onward). Lately though, I’ve been busy with more photographic based themes and images.

Here is a small selection from a series I somewhat blandly titled curiosities, for obvious reasons.

“Bolt Masala” is from a photo I took in a metal engineering factory reception office in Coimbatore in southern India – hence the “masala” connotation.

I spotted the old boots suspended by their laces for “Good Use” in the delightful artists village of Ein Hod on Israel’s Mediterranean coast. It’s proven popular both as a retirement and as an anniversary card…

…as has “Growing Old Together Gracefully” (as an anniversary card that is!) which displays two venerable phone boxes in Hampstead.

“Pond Life” was snapped in the exquisite Alcazar gardens in Seville.

I was struck by the image of “The Blue Cup” in the unlikely setting of Sherwood Forrest – more famous for hosting the “merry men” in Lincoln Green.

Finally, I saw the yellow balloon languishing in a puddle on the Regent’s Canal towpath (north London) on “New Years Day” 2011 – having lost my dear mother barely three months before it seemed like a poignant metaphor for the past year…