[billboards] Evening Standard Billboard Flashback: August 2006 … ‘Shepherd’s Bush Nuclear Waste Row’ …

[billboards] Evening Standard Billboard Flashback: July 2006 … ‘MURDERED – FOR FALLING IN LOVE’ …

[billboards] Evening Standard Billboard Flashback: June 2006 … ‘JCB MANIAC DESTROYS HOUSE: PICTURE’ …

[billboards] Evening Standard Billboard Flashback: May 2006 … ‘PRESCOTT CAUGHT OUT AGAIN’ …

[billboards] Evening Standard Billboard Flashback: March 2006 … Another average month in London: Death, more death, Cancer, Tom Cruise has a baby, John Prescott had an affair and pictures from a HORROR PUPPY FARM.

[billboards] Evening Standard Billboard Flashback: March 2006 … Sex, death, terror, leopards and free goody bags – another average month in London…

[billboards] Evening Standard Billboard Flashback: February 2006 …

[headlines] Evening Standard Billboard Flashback: January 2006 …

[headlines] Evening Standard Billboard Flashback: December 2005 …

[headlines] Evening Standard Billboard Flashback: November 2005 …

[headlines] Evening Standard Billboard Flashback: October 2005 …

[headlines] Evening Standard Billboard Flashback: September 2005 …

Evening Standard Billboard Flashback: The Olympic 2012 Bid Win and 7/7 as Breaking News

Over ten years ago, in 2004, I started taking photographs of Evening Standard headline billboards as I left work or at lunchtime. If the headlines were interesting I would post them to Flickr. I carried on taking the pictures regularly till late in 2010.

Early in July 2005 two big breaking news events happened to London on consecutive days. Firstly, on July 6th the UK won its bid to host the 2012 Olympics in London. You can see the news story develop during that day in the sequence of photos below…

The next day, on July 7th a gang of terrorists detonated three suicide bombs on London Underground trains and later a further bomb on a bus. 52 people were killed and 700 were injured. It was the UK’s first suicide bombing.

I didn’t manage to get into Central London that day because the travel system shut down but the next day I snapped a photo of an empty billboard – no papers or posters had been delivered in Shepherd’s Bush where I worked. Underneath the posters the boards themselves said: “London’s Paper”. It seemed appropriate somehow.

Unsurprisingly, during the next few weeks the Evening Standard’s billboards focussed on the bombings, the victims, the terrorists themselves and the causes of terrorism.

By August, things had calmed down in London and the headlines had to returned to normal. Although, the Evening Standard logo had gained a “London Stands United” tag line. (We need reminding?)

What I didn’t realise at the time was that I was recording the last years of the posters. In 2010, the Evening Standard went free and the development of smart-phones and social media killed the posters as a breaking news source. The boards these days (if you see them at all) seem to lack a certain something. You can find the whole set of billboard photos here on Flickr if you’re interested in more.