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In 1927 the film director Claude Friese-Greene toured the UK collecting images that would show the revolution behind his new camera that was able to capture color images, 'The Bicolour', his last stop was london. He recorded street scenes there in iconic places such as Trafalgar Square, the bank of the River Thames, London Bridge or Greenwich Observatory. His short film called 'the open road' was released and at that time was a total failure.

His ingenious color process filmed the scene using two rolls with two color filters - red and green - however it didn't go on to become a standard within the film industry but the imaging system developed by Friese-Greene was revolutionary for its time, and over the decades its importance has been recognised, hence , almost a century later, the British film institute decided to restore and display 'the open road' in 2013, when
photographer and filmmaker Simon Smith saw the images of old London he was impressed and devoted six months to repeat the short film shot by shot but this time 85 years later. The result is a beautiful contrast of both images showing the urban development of the city although in 1927 there were buses and cars, Smith says on his website, that seeing the two images next to each other surprised him by how little London has changed in all this time.