About

Or “WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?“

Firstly, I am a huge fan of the amazing, brilliant work of Chris Spencer aka Cold War Steve. As someone living through the most turbulent political and social times of a generation, in Brexshit and then Covid, I appreciate the absurd and surreal in his work – it encapsulates the chaos we’re in so successfully in a single image and at the same time provides a laugh to lifts my spirits.

So why do an archive?

I’d quite often scroll back through Twitter to see how far I could go back and if I could see the very first piece, but it was a really frustrating process. Quite often Twitter would land me back at the start or I’d lose my place. I would notice gaps appearing in the timeline and it would skip days, meaning some of the posts wouldn’t show due to some Twitter algorithmic-weirdness that escapes me. The further back in time I’d scroll the less I’d see, like entering some dense data fog. So that became the aim… to bring his incredible body of work together in a space that’s easy to browse and take in.

As a bit of an art fan too, I have a few of his prints on the walls (and the odd jigsaw), so this initiative satisfies a bit of that completist, collector itch I have.

So this site is split into years and the images start from January at the top of the page running through to December. Underneath each image is a link that takes you back to the original Twitter post, the home of this extraordinary output, where you can enjoy the brilliant comments and affirmation Chris receives from the community of followers he’s grown.

So I hope you enjoy scanning back through all the works and find it adequately entertaining. Make sure to visit the main Cold War Steve website and of course don’t forget to follow @coldwarsteve.

Thanks for visiting.

Nick

November 2020

PS I did a Q&A with the fine people at the The Social when the site launched. You can read it here.