We’re back for the second instalment from Peter Marshall’s photographs of passengers on London buses in 1991 and 1992. He these pictures and many others as he walked around London in the 80s and 90s. The first album of photos can be seen here.
For now, as ever, if you know anyone in these photographs, we’d love to hear from you. In the meantime, enjoy the pictures and imagine the stories between…
Clarissa had a theory in those days – they had heaps of theories, always theories, as young people have. It was to explain the feeling they had of dissatisfaction; not knowing people; not being known. For how could they know each other? You met every day; then not for six months, or years. It was unsatisfactory, they agreed, how little one knew people. But she said, sitting on the bus going up Shaftesbury Avenue, she felt herself everywhere; not ‘here, here, here’; and she tapped the back of the seat; but everywhere. She waved her hand, going up Shaftesbury Avenue. She was all that.
— Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
At times a person will make eye contact with Marianne, a bus conductor or someone looking for change, and she’ll be shocked briefly into the realisation that this is in fact her life, that she is actually visible to other people. This feeling opens her to certain longings: hunger and thirst, a desire to speak Swedish, a physical desire to swim or dance.
— Sally Rooney, Normal People
That you in the photographs? Maybe it’s someone you know or knew then?
Would you like to support Flashbak?
Please consider making a donation to our site. We don't want to rely on ads to bring you the best of visual culture. You can also support us by signing up to our Mailing List. And you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. For great art and culture delivered to your door, visit our shop.