Clive Boursnell’s photos of Old Covent Garden Market, captured between 1968 and 1974, are a marvel to behold, his beautifully observed reportage capturing the sights, characters and details making up central London’s main market in its final years.

They are testament to a place where once fruit, vegetables and flowers existed in a continually vivid ebb and flow of transaction, and a remarkable community made their living.

Over the course of those six years Boursnell recorded the comings and goings of the market, documenting and building up relationships with the many people who worked in and around the market. It quickly became an all-consuming project.

“in 1968 I was well aware of Covent Garden market, the cigar smoke going up from the salesmen, the dust from produce, the horses, the clatter of the barrels and the camaraderie between the porters and truck drivers and buyers – was this incredible display of humanity going on"