Sunday 11 May 2014

Faces in the Crowd 1969/1970





Featuring our Supporters read the heading inside the official programme of Millwall Football Club during season 1968/1969 - and then once again throughout the following season. "If you find that you are the person circled above, call at the office and if you can satisfy us that it is really you, then a complimentary ground ticket will be yours for our next home League match". Above appeared a snapshot of the home crowd depicted in an 8.5 x 12 cms photo - made up of thousands of blue and white dots.

Thank-you to Anthony B in Brussels for his reaction to my previous post: 

Greatly intrigued once again by the Faces in the Crowd posting. Like with the record shop ads, I feel I could look at examples of these forever.

The first image looks like the cover of a 1960s new wave science fiction paperback. Something gloomy and anguished by Michael Moorcock or Christopher Priest. 
 
In fact, there's something inherently eerie about the whole idea of this. I'm scared to look at these photos too closely, for fear that I'll see the same person in each one! Staring back expressionlessly at the photographer...


Well, here is another set of Faces in the Crowd, this time from season 1969/1970. How many, captured at the defining moment by the local press photographer, ever got to see their face in print? And of those caught in the white ring, how many got to use their complimentary ticket - having "satisfied" a club official that they really were the face circled in the crowd?




Several matches into the season, the same photo as seen in the mid-August programme was recycled, this time in close-up . The previous ringed face - check the first photograph - has been cropped out (top left hand corner)



In this one, there is a fascinating juxtaposition of the older regulars wearing their flat caps that hark back to the early years of the century, and in the bottom left hand corner a pack of girls sporting the latest terrace trend: skinhead haircuts...and then to their left, stands a chap in flat cap - with a pipe neatly held between his teeth








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