For greater than six many years it was an intimate celebrity hotspot — a small walk-up store on London’s Oxford Street that provided no luxurious items, solely a set of matchbook-sized portraits printed in ten minutes or much less.
The family-owned enterprise Passport Photo Service was identified for its speedy service and its wall-to-wall photos of its starry prospects earlier than it closed in 2019. Founded by an expert boxer-turned-photographer, Dave Sharkey, and handed right down to his son, Philip, the Sharkey household and their employees took pictures for passports, visas and inexperienced playing cards of well-known and non-famous faces alike.
But because of their well-positioned studio close to a cluster of embassies, quick service, and willingness to make home calls, some 800 celebrities sat in entrance of their cameras, together with Muhammad Ali, Madonna, Chaka Khan, Bill Murray, Stella McCartney, Katy Perry, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tilda Swinton.
Until now, the archive had by no means been seen earlier than — besides for many who walked into the store. But after it closed down, partly as a result of relocation of the US embassy, amongst different elements, Philip Sharkey returned to an concept that his family and friends had typically steered: he ought to make a guide.
“Passport Photo Service,” revealed by Phaidon, options greater than 300 hundred celebrity portraits from the Nineteen Fifties to the 2010s. Sharkey defined by cellphone that although he is aware of their well-known clientele are the draw, it’s additionally a guide that memorializes a component of London that has quickly modified, as improvement on Oxford Street, town’s busiest artery for high-end procuring, has left little room for small companies.
“It’s a disappearing London,” Sharkey stated in a cellphone name. “When you could open a little business up the stairs and have a little 500-square-foot office. It’s not like that on Oxford Street anymore, or even anywhere.”
For a very long time, their neighbors have been a journey agent, a modeling company and ending faculty for younger ladies, and a clairvoyant, he recalled. Their personal studio had been the previous workshop of the textile designer William Morris. In the final 5 years of the enterprise, they moved to the again of the constructing, dealing with North Row, when it was purchased by a developer; that house at the moment is a barber store.
But within the early days, Passport Photo Service was identifiable on the road with its “Ready in 10 minutes” slogan on the home windows, in addition to their roving sandwich board staff.
Sharkey started working there at 16 years previous. His mom labored because the receptionist and administrator, and his uncle joined his father as a photographer. They initially used card negatives developed within the darkroom, then moved onto a speedy computerized Kodak Veribrom processor that developed black-and-white prints in simply 5 minutes. By the Nineteen Nineties, they’d integrated digital into the method in order that prospects may see their photos. They had studio lighting, too, a draw for making a flattering picture, Sharkey defined.
He calls the passport picture “the great equalizer” since almost everybody on the planet wants one with a purpose to journey. And although the photogenic actors and entertainers who arrived have been much less more likely to take a nasty shot, it’s nonetheless a extra candid, stripped-down view.
“Most of them didn’t come in with any makeup artists or PR, because they’ve just been to the embassy,” Sharkey stated, recalling a time that the actor Donald Sutherland breezed via. “He had been to the Canadian Embassy, hadn’t got his passport, needed to renew it. Didn’t even have time to take his coat off. He just flicked his collar up.”
One of the exceptions was Kate Winslet, who within the late Nineteen Nineties was accompanied by a small crew throughout the filming of “Hideous Kinky,” which required her character to indicate her passport within the movie. The portrait was taken solely months earlier than “Titanic” launched and made her a worldwide star.
Celebrities, too, beloved to scan the store’s wall of fame, Sharkey stated, recalling the time that Angelina Jolie got here in throughout a quiet afternoon and identified everybody she’d labored with. Another, unnamed actor occurred to return simply after Sharkey had moved her portrait to make room, leading to an ungainly rationalization. Some stars utilized their companies a number of instances through the years: actors Joan Collins in 1971, 1979 and 1988; Sean Connery in 1977 and 1989; Ava Gardner in 1976 and 1987; and artist David Hockney in 1965 and 1970.
Their home calls have been memorable, too — visiting Madonna and Guy Ritchie’s former house to take their portraits “just after they’d put the kids to bed,” or journeys to recording studios to {photograph} Sting, George Michael or Eric Clapton. Sharkey continues the studio on this vein, nonetheless making portraits as wanted for his or her buyer base.
Not all of the celebrities they’ve snapped made the minimize in “Passport Photo Service,” and a handful of these portraits stay within the vault. Sharkey stated they solely needed to signal non-disclosure agreements a number of instances over the course of the enterprise, and their identities will proceed to be saved secret.
“One of them is such a pain in the butt that I wouldn’t have put them in anyway,” he stated, laughing.