PASSPORT PHOTO SERVICE

Ready for their close-up.

Sharkey and his family took hundreds of celebrity photos, pictures of everyone from John Cleese and Sean Connery to Joan Collins and Tilda Swinton. These were no paparazzi snapshots: The famous paid to have their portraits taken. They were among the many people from all walks of life who strode into the family’s studio, on Oxford Street in London, to have their passport photos taken. Passport Photo Service was in business for 66 years, closing its doors in 2019, and in that time it was visited by, among others, actors and authors and athletes and musicians. Sharkey’s father, David, a former boxer, was inspired to open a “quick and easy photography service” when hearing an American tear into “this lousy town” that couldn’t provide him with a same-day passport photo. This delightful collection includes 300 never-before-seen, mostly black-and-white images that show another side to familiar faces. We see a boyish Daniel Day-Lewis, photographed in 1987, a kerchief around his neck, a Mona Lisa smile across his lips. Stephen Fry, wearing a tie—and a devilish grin—was a regular visitor to the studio, Sharkey says in one of the accompanying notes. Fry’s headshot was displayed in the shop next to that of his comedy partner, Hugh Laurie, which, Sharkey writes, led to “good-natured and often bawdy comments from both on seeing each other’s images when visiting.” David Hockney appears in two photos, in 1965 and 1970, his prominent, round glasses giving him the appearance of a proto-Harry Potter. Chrissie Hynde, in four images from the ’80s and ’90s, has (fittingly enough) the cool look of a rock star, and Chaka Khan, in 1990, is seen beaming. The smiles have been lost to post-9/11 rules about neutral expressions. Also lost is a shop that provided a basic travel necessity, a photo that was, as Sharkey writes, a “great leveller.”

A wonderful collection of famous faces as they appeared in everyday travel documents.