Kiosk 6

Below are the photos I took as part of the research for a one minute film documenting red telephone boxes...

Designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and introduced to the United Kingdom and British Colonies from 1925, the colour red was chosen to make them easy to spot.

Over the years there's been several slightly different models of the box. The most popular is named Kiosk 6 and it was that what I eventually decided to call the finished video. It was first introduced in 1935 and many of them still stand today.

1925 - 1,000 (K1)

1930 - 8,000 (K2 & K3 added)

1935 - 19,000 (K6 introduced)

1940 - 35,000

1950 - 44,000

1960 - 65,000

1970 - 70,000 (K8 introduced in 1968)

1980 - 73,000

At one point in history telephone boxes were the primary means of communication between people in the developed world, beacons of technological advancement.

Today they have been superseded by mobile phones and e-mail. And yet these structures remain, like relics of an ancient civilization.

There's a place in Surrey that collect and restore old phone boxes. I noticed it once when on a train from West Sussex into London. For a few seconds you can see rows of phone boxes, it resembles a grave yard. One day I'd like to shoot something there, a chase sequence perhaps. This is it from above...

A typical day in central London may see the phone box being used more as a place to shelter from the rain, or a hideaway for eager lovers than as a means of communication.

They can also attract less favorable things such as prostitution cards and drug deals, as well as being used as a public urinal and temporary crack den.

The unifying narrative of the film is the passing of day into night around the different locations of phone boxes, in a sense, it's the day in the life of the Kiosk 6.

At its heart the film is documentary, most of the events are real. However, there are also some staged elements in there, for example, the guy waiting with a bunch of flowers, the police car that drives by and the girl who's being sick at the end. I introduced these narrative parts to explore the merging of documentary and fictional filmmaking and was partly inspired by John Smith's brilliant short film 'Girl Chewing Gum'.