The occasion of the first London Street Photography Festival has acted as a bit of a catalyst to complete a…
The impossible letters
The impossible letters – how can read the letters of the alphabet in everyday objects, in buildings, on the street? This was the project challenge for a group of photographers who participated in a workshop organised as part of the inaugural London Street Photography Festival. After reviewing the work of the two course conveners – David Gibson and Jesse Marlow (also the winner of the festival’s international award), both members of iN-PUBLIC – and a selection of other street photographers, it was time to wander the streets around Spitalfields and Shoreditch. This is my contribution to the task – followed by some loitering at the Ten Bells afterwards…
The random urban photographer
An intoxication comes over the man who walks long and aimlessly through the street. With each step, the walk takes on greater momentum; ever weaker grow the temptations of shops, of bistros, of smiling women, ever more irresistible the magnetism of the next street corner, of a distant mass of foliage, of a street name.
New Stolpersteine and London images
Le flaneur spent Christmas 2010 in Dusseldorf enjoying the snow but also exploring the pavements to discover new stolpersteine locations in the city. This most recent journey brings the total number of individual addresses to 43. These new additions build on existing concentrations and introduce new locations to the catalogue. This most recent set of additions has also encouraged a revision of the existing structure of the series, reflecting the organic way the project has grown and evolved over the past two years.
Stolpersteine update
The Düsseldorf Stolpersteine series has grown to encompass Stolpersteine from 24 locations across the city. Our journey takes us from the ancient town centre – the Altstadt, across the Rhine to the upmarket Oberkassel and then southeast to the old working class district of Eller.
Stolpersteine series added
The Düsseldorf Stolpersteine series has now been added to the site, a walk which follows the locations of Stolpersteine in a variety of districts in the city. I first discovered Stolpersteine (stumble stones) in Berlin in the summer of 2006. Further research revealed that the Stolpersteine project is the work of a single German artist – Gunter Demnig and that today more than 13,000 Stopersteine are embedded in streets all over Germany and a growing number of European cities.
London Series – Clerkenwell and Smithfield – Crime, revolutions and executions
Crime, revolutions and executions seems an apt subtitle for Clerkenwell and Smithfield – a district that has housed prisons, acted as a site for public executions and has been the chosen residence of its fair share of revolutionaries over the centuries. Clerkenwell (Clerks Well) and Smithfield (Smooth field) are two ancient districts on the boundaries of the City of London and over the centuries have seen multiple waves of development – from fashionable districts in the 17th century, through industrial revolution and post-war decline to come full circle to trendy districts in the 1990s. An example is the Clerkenwell house of detention – first a prison, later a school and now – luxury flats (though the prison cells remain in the basement).
Memories of the Displaced
The genesis of this project arose out of my first visits to Poland in 2005 and the stark differences I discovered between the Polish Catholic cemeteries and the state of the Jewish cemeteries in Krakow. It was not just the overgrown, cracked and broken tombstones – but also the years of death on many of the tombstones in the Miodowa Street cemetery.
Les Murs de Paris
Walking through Paris from the fashionable 8ème to the rapidly gentrifying old working class districts to the North & North East brings you across a variety of signs and street art on the walls – official and unofficial. This series, collected over several years, also reflects the impermanence of the urban space – murals can be repainted, buildings torn down, districts regenerated and urban improvements created.
Brussels New Year 2007
A random walk through Brussels in the closing days of 2007. The journey takes in the districts of Ixelles & St Gilles in the south with their combination of Art Deco, Art Nouveau and other architectural styles. A fine example of Art Nouveau is the house built for the industrialist Edouard Hannon with its frescos by Boudouin, which today houses the Espace Photographique Contretype.
Yorkshire Sculpture Park
The 18th century parkland of Bretton Hall is, like any urban space, a man-made landscape – modeled and transformed to suit the tastes of it’s owner. Today as the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, the grounds of the estate provide an environment for the exhibition of contemporary sculpture. A recent addition is work by Andy Goldsworthy – a permanent exhibition of ‘Hanging Trees’, embedded in the remains of a derelict Ha-Ha – part of the original fabric of the Bretton estate.