Photographs by Roger Perry

Roger Perry's Writing on the Wall (1976) is a snapshot of London in 1975, a city battered by recession, housing shortages, and rising alienation. Perry's 110 photographs capture awkward graffiti in run-down areas like Notting Hill Gate, where free speech found a home on the walls. These slogans aren't the territorial tags we see today. They're anonymous, and laced with frustration: "Dada is everywhere", "Words do not mean anything today". One of the most striking messages snakes along the tube line between Ladbroke Grove and Westbourne Park: "SAME THING DAY AFTER DAY – TUBE – WORK – DINER – WORK – TUBE – ARMCHAIR – TUBE – WORK – HOW MUCH MORE CAN YOU TAKE – ONE IN FIVE CRACKS UP." As John Savage notes in England's Dreaming, Perry's images document a kind of urban poetry, a response to a city that felt crushing, repetitive, and soulless. These marks of defiance, scrawled in the margins of a struggling capital, stand as reminders that even in the harshest environments, human expression finds a way. (p. 111)