Photographing London at rush hour, 1978

London-born Lewis was actually a chemistry teacher before he decided to pursue his love for photography as a profession. He won a scholarship in 1974 to study photography at London’s Royal College of Art. In 1976, he got a job at top fashion magazine Vogue as a staff photographer, before going freelance in 1977.

These photographs are from a series called Coming and Going. It was commissioned by our museum to document the ebb and flow of people and traffic through the capital.

Red Arrows were regular, limited-stop buses that mostly served commuters travelling from London’s main railway stations. The first Red Arrow launched in 1966 and ran from Victoria Station to Marble Arch. You’d pay the same fare no matter how long your journey was.

Here, a Routemaster bus is stuck in traffic going over London Bridge. These red double-decker vehicles are a historic London icon – and are possibly the most famous buses ever built. They were used across the city from 1956 to 2005.

There’s not a single spare seat on this Tube. In 1977, the Piccadilly Line was extended to make Heathrow Airport’s terminals directly accessible from central London by Tube. This was the first service of its kind in the world from a capital city to its main airport.

You’d expect heavy traffic on this major shopping thoroughfare. But couple that with Christmas present-buying and you’ll have taxis and buses stuck bumper-to-bumper, like Lewis captured here.

A passenger on a Southern Region train reads the day’s issue of the Evening News. They’ve run with the headline “We’ll go on caning the commuters”. Commuting is still a front-page news topic today, whether it’s price rises, strikes or travel chaos caused by delays and cancellations.