Portrait of a schoolgirl

Riverside School, Thamesmead Portrait #34 1977, originally uploaded by Mak'm.

From 1976 to 1978, George Plemper was a teacher at Riverside School in Thamesmead in London. "I was a chemistry teacher, but not a very good one." Burdened with writing so incomprehensible the kids couldn't understand his blackboard scribblings, he started taking photos of the kids instead. They had to invent the internet before the rest of us could appreciate them.

I've been trying to work out why these photographs are so arresting. Mostly, the kids aren't smiling. I wonder how he stopped them — kids get so posey around that age, always mugging for the camera. They don't look curious either, which perhaps reflects that happy era before digital cameras, before the "show me, show me, argh, delete it, no, print it out!" rigmarole that succeeds photograph-taking these days. The product of the snapping must have seemed so theoretical.

Then there's that remarkable contrast between the crispness of the lines and the soft frankness of her gaze and hair.

Plus, there's something about the way she's locked in the 70s. We all know what's in store for you, missy moo. We know what you'll be listening to when you're eighteen (Blondie — The Tide is High), how you'll bury your face into your pillow at twenty-one, crying with the sheer floaty loveliness of Lady Di's Emmanuelle wedding dress, how you'll get your hair cut when you're twenty-five (short, bouffy, tousled), how you'll always love Gary even though he can be a right bastard sometimes...

Or perhaps something else entirely.

Here's another.

Riverside School, Thamesmead, England. Portrait #10 1976, originally uploaded by Mak'm.

George Plemper:

"His name is Sam Uba. He was a Biafran refugee and therefore a relatively new arrival, stuck on this remote housing complex. There was something about the photograph of this schoolboy from a war-torn country — something shone through."

Mr Plemper's abortion of a teaching career reminds me of those Armstrong & Miller sketches about losers becoming teachers, you know, like this: