Tagged: London
Taking stock 2
I have been occasionally selling prints through Alamy and I’ve decided to upload more frequently to this site.
My previous contributions have been a haphazard selection from holiday photos, social gatherings and outings. Looking through them, my main fascination has been with change, especially with London’s ever-changing buildings and skyline.
The evolution of cities has always interested me, from how Manhattanite slums in the late 70s have become exclusive addresses, or how the deserted stretches of the abandoned Berlin wall have become bustling tourist destinations.
In addition to gathering and uploading my older images of London, I’m now taking as many photos of London spaces as I can manage, before the next big changes.
London
Over the years, I’ve taken many images of my home city. I’ve sampled a few here as I build up my portfolio.
Skylight
For a long weekend this mid-January, central London was taken over by light installations from Lumiere London, an arts event arranged by Artichoke. The event was attended by one million pedestrians over the four nights, which was probably why it was so hard for us to get around and see stuff, but I got a few photos in the end.
Les Luminéoles by Porté par le vent on Regent Street
Although I’m used to London’s road traffic, there’s always something refreshingly different about areas being taken over by pedestrians: the Notting Hill Carnival; New Year’s Day; football and music events. That said, it can be absolute hell to get by on the diversions. Still, to walk down Regent Street to see a hologram of an elephant in the Air Street arch is quite a treat.
Elephantastic!
We walked on, pushed along by crowds and later I thought that visiting over several days may have been a better way to go about things, but no matter: the west end streets turned into light-jewelled paths for one night was enough for me to feast on until the next Lumiere festival.
Piccadilly
The Infinite City
Wherever I’ve travelled, I’ve always been most fascinated by cities.
I find them magical, vibrant and multi-layered. While most places have attractive aspects, cities lend themselves to exploration and experiment in a way I can’t find anywhere else: I feel conspicuous in the countryside; I can get lost in a city.
Despite spending most of my life in London, I find that I know very little of it. Happily, I have friends who are ready to explore it with me on photo walks, nature walks and bike rides. We go to places we know and places we’ve never been and we search out as much as we can.
One such recent case was with a cycling friend: “Let’s go east again,” she suggested, “Bermondsey.” Okay. We met at Waterloo and cycled east, past Blackfriars and Tower Bridge to Bermondsey. Then we continued on aimlessly, taking in anything that interested us.
Here was a view from Bermondsey’s south bank of Tower Bridge and the City of London that we hadn’t seen before.
The further we went along the undulating river Thames, the more our view of the city changed.
Passing by St. Mary’s Church in Rotherhithe, we found the juxtaposition of a children’s play area and a graveyard. Somehow, it seemed quite touching.
Continuing to the Docklands area we were amazed by the size and quiet of Greenland Quay. Practically derelict during the 1970s, it had been redeveloped into residential properties; the dock, formerly used for ships involved in the whaling and timber trades, is now used for recreational purposes and is one of only two functioning enclosed docks on the south bank of the Thames.
An about turn revealed this seated grafitto under a road bridge: another work by Banksy?
Our return home took us through one of London’s many green spaces: Russia Dock Woodland. I have an impossible dream of visiting all of London’s green spaces; impossible, because there are so many of them and so many more being developed. The woodland was developed by the infilling of the former Russia Dock: the park itself was long and narrow. This artificial hill photographed, Stave Hill, was created by using spoil (waste material and rubble) from the works to fill and landscape the areas formerly occupied by commercial docks.
It has a viewing platform on the top, but my friend and I didn’t ascend it, encumbered as we were with our bikes. But I’m sure we’ll return to take a view from the top across this infinite city.
Left to right
I am a big fan of taking photo walks. Getting lost somewhere new or familiar and taking a lot of photos with my camera is a great way to get to know an area; a good walk enhanced.
Occasionally, I may pass an area by car, bus or tube; a little too fast to take a considered photo. On buying a new camera recently, I decided to break it in by photographing one or two of these particular areas that I’d seen across London on something of an epic photo walk, which took me from west to east London.
I started near Westbourne Park, home of the Trellick Tower, designed by architect Erno Goldfinger. I’d heard a lot about this building; its prized flats and its grade II listed status, but I’d only seen it from afar.
Approaching the tube station nearby, I glanced across the road at the bus depot. I’d always been a big fan of large, cavernous spaces (possibly a hangover from seeing Ken Adams magnificent set designs, especially in the Bond movies). After asking permission from a couple of Transport for London operatives standing nearby (“No problem, mate: do what you want…”) I took an image.
Getting off at Edgware Road, I walked to a nearby park in the Paddington area. Despite an old friend living here for some years, I had hardly explored the area. Intrigued by a green expanse north of the A501 road, I walked to Paddington Green conservation area, where I was entranced by the entrance to the local Church of St. Mary. Nestled among the leaves, the bright sunlight dappled pleasantly over it.
Next, I wanted to look at some big ceilings. I had photographed Lord Foster‘s glass-roofed Great Court before, but I wanted to see how my camera’s 50mm lens would take it.
I also took this view of the columns at the entrance on my way out. I’ve always loved this classical architecture; my early drawings as a preteen were full of them, maybe from being a fan of the Thames television logo, or from early, half-remembered family journeys around London as a child. I’ll be attempting more views on return visits.
A short bus ride took me to King’s Cross railway station; particularly to the semi-circular departures concourse designed by John McAslan. Magnificent stuff, which my lens couldn’t really take in entirely. This view from Wikipedia does it more justice: I’ll return there sometime and try photographing it again.
The last part of the journey took me from north central to east London. I stopped at Mile End, where its attractive park straddles a bridge over the A11 road. I had previously taken a view of the Canary Wharf development, framed by the undulating park, but this was with a zoom lens at its longest end: not do-able here. I had to settle for this different view: the financial oasis, framed by local buildings.
Journey’s end came at Blackwall, in particular, the junction of the A13 East India Dock Road and the A12 Blackwall Tunnel Northern Approach. I find the hardened, industrial aspect to this area exciting and love photographing it. On a car journey, I remembered seeing an odd hoarding about lifestyles. Was it a trick of the light? No, it really was there: graffiti artist Banksy was up to his tricks again.
I quite liked juxtaposing it with a closer view of Canary Wharf: lavish lifestyles out of stock? Who’d have thought it?
Hanging around
Some time ago, I missed going to see a certain artwork, so I posted about some other sculpture I passed by instead. Since then, I took the time out to visit the public art that I wanted to post about in the first place: the Dalston House, a commission by the Barbican by Argentine architect Leandro Erlich.
I’d seen this on the news and I couldn’t quite believe how it worked: in an empty lot on a Hackney street, the facade of a 19th century terraced house was laid out on the ground. Above this a mirror at a 45-degree incline reflected this facade. The result? By sitting or lying on various spots on the ground, one could appear to be dangling from windows or scaling the walls. Fantastic, really.
It was very popular, with an usher informing new arrivals to the queue of a 75 minute wait to use the work. On arrival, one had five minutes to use the work, take photos and generally have a lot of fun. The real fun for me was in watching others use the site: it was as much to be looked at as used; once I was able to play on the site, it was a touch difficult to get the most out of it on my own. Families and couples, with some posing and others photographing, had a great time.
“75 minutes waiting time? Really?”
“75 minutes photographing this? Oh, okay then…”
Posing on the artwork…
…to be reflected in the mirror…
…and make fun photos!
A welcome addition of a welcome mat.
My turn! I took a lot of photos of my play on the artwork; this was one of the few that turned out okay.
However, a nice chap called Paul took my photo at my request.
Such strength!
Mr. Erlich is known for his immersive works, which I am going to look into reading about, if not seeing, in future. In the meantime, my photographs and others images and videos will remind me of this extraordinary work.
Building maps
I love the London Underground. I love LEGO. So I was rather pleased to see that some enterprising people had combined the two to make five LEGO Underground maps to celebrate the 150 year anniversary of the tube system. The maps will be displayed for a few months before they’re moved to the London Transport museum.
They represented maps from 1927, Harry Beck’s original Underground diagram from 1933, 1968, the present day and a view to the future in 2020. I went about seeing them all.
The 1927 map was at South Kensington station.
Mr. Beck’s map was at Piccadilly Circus: check out the old station names and the forthcoming extension!
The 1968 map was placed on display at Green Park station.
While Stratford station had the map from the present day.
Finally, King’s Cross St. Pancras station had the future map, with Crossrail and the Northern Line extension previewed.
Whenever I saw one, a small crowd would gather, take photos or just marvel at the time it took to produce such a map. Each map was made up of more than 1000 bricks and took four days to build. They were solo efforts, by Duncan Titmarsh, the UK’s only certified LEGO professional. Well done, sir…
On top of the city
I find that I hardly ever look up when I’m walking around in London. In a foreign city, my eyes will glance everywhere, around buildings, shops, windows and people, but in my home city, I focus on getting to my destination and precious little else. I must miss a fair amount.
While I am lucky enough to work in a tall building with terrific views, a lot of this city’s tall buildings are security guarded; we can look at them but can enter no further than the reception. While one can make a journey on the London Eye or make a trip up the Shard, the views are from above the city, staring down at an angled map, rather than looking at the city’s peaks and troughs.
This is why I appreciate places like the Portrait Restaurant at the National Portrait Gallery. Situated on the gallery’s third floor, it boasts views that skim the roofs of the National Gallery, across Trafalgar Square towards Parliament Square; an entirely refreshing view of London.
While my friend and I sipped our wine, I saw others take advantage of the beautiful afternoon light to get an untypical image of the city: not looking up at, or looking down to, but looking over. I had to do the same.
In the clouds
This is an artwork called Cloud: Metéoros, by husband and wife team Lucy and Jorge Orta. It’s comprised of two cloud-like structures, suspended from the roof of St. Pancras International station by wires. When I read about this sculpture I knew that I had to visit and photograph it before too long.
Facing the end of the Eurostar platforms, the cloud forms are laden with what seem like travellers who have been on a similar train journey.
The awfully nice staff at the Searcy’s champagne bar let me shoot from a decent angle in their establishment, but I could never get the angle I wanted: straight on. For this, I think I would need to be on the Eurostar platforms themselves. And to do that? Maybe there’s another trip to Paris, Brussels or Lille on the cards…
Somerset House
A friend and I visited Somerset House near the Aldwych on a sunny evening. The courtyard was filled with water fountains; in the winter, an ice rink takes their place. The exhibitions there are always entertaining (we went to see the Sony World Photography exhibition) and the cafe / bar is a delight. And the building itself? Most impressive!
Burning Details 
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