A Place of Angels - The true story ...

As a Londoner I have known virtually all my life about a special area of sacred ground situated in North London, but unlike many I had never visited it. Now as an expatriate living in California, I had on one return journey to England been drawn to see & photograph this Victorian Place of Angels. The place I talk of is a place of tended wildness set aside by Queen Victoria in 1839 in which angelic statues stand powerful, noble, serene & ever-watchful. To this day it is one of the most magical places in London!

What took me to 'A Place of Angels' was the need to look for 'new' material of an angelic and atmospheric nature (a lot of my current work is in recreating such images), little did I realize that in this old and somewhat overgrown gothic place I would witness such spiritual splendor, for I had no idea of the beauty my soul was about to feel & my lens about to capture ......

England being England, needless to say, on the alotted day it was pouring .... still I said my prayers (for the weather) and headed out. The journey took about an hour, by which time my request seemed to have been partially answered, the rain had slackened but the color was still gray, everywhere it was gray. I tried to put away all the Vincent Price images as I parked the car in the leafy lane outside the grounds.

As the remaining raindrops pitter-pattered on their journey from leaf to stone my eye caught the most amazing sight. Fumbling madly to fix my lens and at the same time figure the exposure (purists only use manual cameras... blast!) I attempted to focus before ............ a drip of water left the nose of an exquisite angel! During all this activity I had the most uncanny feeling that the angel was crying, my hand almost shook with what I was seeing through the lens. Click, click, click, I reeled off about 10 shots before the drip made its final journey groundward. I dont know how I managed to see that shot, let alone capture it - and as I stood there taking in the moment, no further rain touched the angel!

There was something very special & indeed magical allowed to me that gray & rainy day in London that permitted me to capture these wonderful angelic figures on film. In doing so, I hope I have been able to transfer the spirit & emotion of that moment.

There's one thing I forgot to mention, the area that a 'A Place of Angels' is situated in, is called....Highgate!

P.S. I went back to Highgate in the Summer of 1999 to re-shoot the Angels, this time armed with the knowledge of what my clients liked and needed. These images have been popular with customers virtually since the day they went on the market so we have seen their serene faces and statuesque bodies virtually every day of every week since 1994 - and one in particlar - the 'Love' Angel (used on the candle and many other products). So it was with great excitement that I entered the gates of Highgate once again to continue my photographic experience.

All I can say is that it is the strangest thing to have seen so many of these images over the years 6000 miles away in Los Angeles on a daily basis, now here I am confronting these wonderful stone creations as if they were long lost friends. It was indeed lucky for me that there were not too many people around at the time for surely I would have been thought of as most eccentric - and that's putting it mildly!

Now here's the strangest thing, as hard as I tried I could not find my 'Love' - I walked the entire place twice and having spent nearly 5 hours doing so she was nowhere to be found! I stood in total frustration, our most popular image and I could not find the statue - I had found every other one plus others I had left out on the first shoot but not this one, had she been moved, did she vanish, was she fed up of being photographed by me? My frustration got the better of me, I shut my eyes and virtually chanted ' where are you - where are you' over and over, I'm sure I said it out loud, and then I heard a tiny voice in my head say 'over here - to your right'. As I opened my eyes and turned to the right all I saw was a sort of large hedge type ivy surrounding the base of an old tree (bear in mind that Highgate is very overgrown) - something made me walk toward the ivy, I was virtually walking into it when to my amazement . . . . there she was!

I know I spoke out aloud, at that point I didn't care who heard me, I was absolutely jubilant and what a strange sight I must have been viewed from behind, pressed up to these overgrown bushes and talking to myself.

It is indeed a mystery to me how at that moment I was standing in the very place I needed to be to find that very special Angel. Highgate is enormous, it has paved pathways but you need to get off these to see the splendid statues, it is overgrown, winding and Victorian (see photo 'A Place of Angels'), not an easy place to navigate and I had no idea what Angel was where 5 years down the line!

What I hadn't planned on was that in the years since the first photo shoot the gardeners had allowed more foliage to grow and in this one instance it had totally obscured from normal view the one very beautiful statue I had to find.

Many people that have purchased the 'Love' Angel from us have asked its whereabouts, some, making a trip to London, have shown their interest in visiting Highgate. Now there is only one diffence - they will never ever see the real statue, for it is totally hidden from normal view - unless of course they happen to be standing in the right place and whispering 'where are you - where are you!'

The above is a true story, I have neither added nor left anything out - it happened on the day that the moon totally eclipsed the sun . . . . .

Jeff Cane 16th October 2000.