Tracey Thorne

London Calling: Tart Cards 

Selected images from the series (2021- 2022)

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London Calling documents the fading world of Tart Cards—a once-thriving and uniquely British print culture intimately tied to the sex industry. From the 1980s onwards, these cards transformed London’s phone boxes into unofficial galleries of erotic advertising—raw, coded, and defiantly public.

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Over the past decade, however, this distinct form of visual expression has been nearly erased through targeted policing, the cleansing and removal of telephone boxes, and broader efforts to sanitise the city’s image.

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These images capture the final remnants of a disappearing culture—fragile traces preserved as visual fragments. More than just historical ephemera, they speak to wider themes of visibility, gender, and control over urban space. The erasure of tart cards reflects ongoing battles over who is allowed to be seen—and whose presence is deemed undesirable—in the public life of the city.

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Selected images from the series are available in a limited edition photozine available here and a PDF can be purchased via Blurb