image and content copyright Victoria Alexandra Cabrini Luckie
It was on the 22nd December that I first noticed it had gone.For as long as I can remember this advert has been one of the landmarks that tell me I am in London. Over the years London has sprawled westwards but this advert remained, it's lights a blinking, twinkling, effervescent reminder of a bygone era and that you were now entering the bright lights of a big city. and that was why I often photographed it from inside the car.
Recently the route has become more built up, it's brash advertising owing more perhaps to the aggressive, impersonal eighties comic book interpretation of advertising in films such as Blade runner than to the London of my childhood. The Lucozade advert had stood out, a lone lorax of advertising among the ugly Sky building, the brightly lit car hotels and the huge new white metal advertising hoardings on either side of the road more reminiscent of the kisscam at a baseball game or of the fabled gates of Mordor. It has been replaced by another larger, plainer, flashier, brighter Lucozade sign, and a little more of London's charm has been lost forever. I chose this image, which is not technically the best because I think the positioning of the SOS sign and the dried raindrops on the windscreen of my car lend a certain tearstained quality.