Classic Cafes
PHOTOFINISH
From 'Classic Cafes', Black Dog, £19.95
Nothing cures a hangover faster than a visit to a greasy spoon. For Adrian Maddox, though, the working man's caff is more a quick-fix pit stop, as he makes clear in Classic Cafes, his study of mid-20th-century British Diners. Food is "immaterial" to whether a cafe makes the grade. Rather, it's the drab grot of cafes that Maddox loves - the "smudged walls" and "scurvy curtains", the melancholy and "Pinter-esque ambiences".
Phil Nicholls's photographs, which accompany Maddox's words, capture exactly that. Nicholls must have documented almost all the Formica-and-leatherette establishments London can offer. But there's barely a single human figure to soften all the empty space. It's like any number of Edward Hopper paintings, just without people.
The booth in this photograph - in Piccolo, a cafe in Eldon Street, London EC2 - is everything a cafe connoisseur could want: the easy-wipe surfaces, the Pyrex vinegar container, the squeezy bottles of ketchup and brown sauce, the Formica tabletop, faux-leather banquettes and gaudy tiles. All it lacks is a punter or two.
Classic Cafes is motivated by nostalgia for an era in which identikit coffee joints hadn't "brutally Starbuck-ed" our high streets. Yet Nicholls's photography cleverly avoids looking kitsch. There's something poignant about this picture that goes beyond easy sentiment. It has a special melancholy - what Maddox calls an "eternal, aching emptiness". For soon, he suggests, the caff may vanish altogether.
Alastair Sooke
Telegraph, Saturday, September 4, 2004