Mark Manzi makes a spectacle of spectators at the Queen’s 90th Birthday

On Saturday 11 June 2016, at 90 years old, the Queen observed her official birthday and the trooping of the colour. Hordes of the British public and flocks of tourists amassed to catch a glimpse of this parade of horses and regalia, and the Queen in her ceremonial carriage and bright green dress, as they passed down The Mall back to Buckingham Palace.

London-based Photographer Mark Manzi had other ideas, heading down as a voyeur photographing the amassing throng of onlookers, straining and craning their own cameras to immortalise the event. The resulting series of photographs The Queen at 90 is one part editorial feature, and one part a humorous montage recording the lengths people go to in awe of tradition and spectacle.

“Some photographs just made themselves, some characters were just too impressive to ignore. The sheer range of people that were there for the queen, the amount of different languages I heard in the crowds and the nationalities made me happy to be there,” he says.

His own photograph of the Queen, cleverly saved for the end of this series of images, is tiny. Perfectly in focus and centred, it is shot through the jubilantly raised arms and cameras of the crowd. Manchester-born Mark is a graduate of graphic design from Nottingham Trent University and works as a photographer, illustrator and graphic designer in London.