London (and Beyond) Calling
Sep 1, 2022
Photo Contest submissions look at the VT world in a different and dazzling way.
Alice Black, managing director of Blacks Productions, was standing with her mum between the Hershesons Fitzrovia salon and One New Change shopping complex in downtown London recently when she looked up. Fortunately, Black had her camera in hand. She says:
“I believe we spend so much of our time looking forward and only really seeing what’s right in front of us, especially in London. We are one of so many cities racing against the clock. But, if we take just 5 min to look up, we see the world in a different way. Luckily, I captured that through my lens that day.”
Black’s photo, titled “Madison New Change — Skyline in the City,” was submitted to ELEVATOR WORLD’s 2022 Photo Contest. It shows the city from a different perspective, with the structures’ glassy façades reflecting a pink and blue sky. A testament to the high quality of this year’s contest submissions, Black’s photo did not place in the contest. It is among photos featured here that take readers to other vantage points in London and beyond — specifically, to Oxford and North Yorkshire in the U.K., as well as to locations in North America and South Asia.
Photographer David Pujado also captured impressive images of London; two are featured here: “The Shard,” showcasing the landmark against a cloudy, pregnant sky as the sun sets, and “London 3,” which captures skyscrapers The Cheesegrater, the Walkie Talkie and 6-8 Bishopsgate in black and white in the city’s Square Mile, with the Thames River in the foreground. To the east at Christ Church in Oxford, Leah Sykes of Shorts Lifts brings us “Tom Quad,” an overhead view of the historic Great Quadrangle — the largest college quad in Oxford — under blue skies strung with fluffy white cumulous clouds. Heading considerably north, Lee Wickham photographed a “Wine Lift” in a private home in North Yorkshire. Framed by a brown brick arch, the system is a bespoke service lift manufactured by BKG Bunse Aufzuge of Paderborn, Germany, and supplied and installed by John Fenwick of Shorts Industries Ltd. of Bradford, West Yorkshire.
Across the pond, Jon Kerr of Warrington, Pennsylvania-based SnapCab shows two workers dressed identically in navy T-shirts, blue jeans and shiny red hardhats performing a “SnapCab Simple Interior Install.” An Americans With Disabilities Act-compliant vertical-transportation (VT) system is showcased by Lisa Basil of Southeast Elevator in “ADA Accessibility at the F1 Miami Grand Prix.” It shows a platform lift adjacent to stairs nestled amongst the palm trees and bright green native foliage outside the Miami International Autodrome. In Vancouver, Aidan Ferris shows us a “Beautiful Glass Elevator in Vancouver” overlooking Burrard Inlet.
The downfall of the American shopping mall is reflected in “The Sad Montgomery Escalator” by Leo Berardi, who says:
“This was my childhood escalator. I’ve ridden this multiple times, and it stuck with me because it dates to 1981 when the mall first opened. This escalator was installed by Montgomery Elevator Co. in 1981. I’ve actually connected on Facebook with the people who installed the escalator, which is located at Stratford Square Mall in Bloomington, Indiana. Two other, similar escalators in the mall have been demolished and replaced by KONE (units). There was even an elevator at the mall that was removed in 1999 to make way for escalators. It’s just sad that no one uses this escalator. From good beginnings to horrible downfalls, this escalator is currently (two months after the photo was taken) broken.”
From the other side of the world, photographer Mithail Afrige Chowdhury looks up at the panoramic glass elevators lining an atrium at the 19-story “Bashundhara Shopping Mall, Dhaka Bangladesh.” The photo was taken at Bashundhara City, the second-largest shopping mall in Bangladesh and one of the largest in South Asia at 191,000 ft2. We hope you enjoy these stunning photographs, and encourage you, wherever in the world you are, to submit entries, starting in January 2023, to the 2023 EW Photo Contest.
References
Get more of Elevator World. Sign up for our free e-newsletter.
