Photographers in quest to take images of every London street Report: SHONA WALL Images: STEWART WALL www.Stewartwall.com
“I
HAVE been to the boundary, to the wall, to the places where the city ends, where the train tracks knot together, where the pylons hiss and fizz their dissatisfaction, where the workings show, the innards, the guts, the secretions, to the place where we hone our taste for fragments. Here in this kaleidoscope of ruins, here where the fabric develops stress fractures, where the plots unravel, and the old stories get forgotten, where oral history is speechless, where myth dies, I have been both lost and found.”
British author Geoff Nicholson described the city of London with these words in his novel Bleeding London, written in 1997 and shortlisted for the Whitbread award. A character in the novel makes a personal quest to walk every street in the city, keeping a journal of his progress. That quest is being recreated in an ambitious project to photograph every street in London – thought to be 73,000 of them – in a project organised by the Royal Photographic Society. Between March and October, 2014, Londoners and visitors are being encouraged to photograph all the streets in the London A to Z, with a view to a book and exhibition being released in 2015. Points will be awarded to contributors.
Launch: author Geoff Nicholson officially launches “Bleeding London”. Inset, Olympus is to donate an OMD EM-10 to the winner of the project’s bonus points league
The project is the brainchild of Del Barrett, RPS London’s Regional Organiser, who said she bought a copy of the book
while waiting for a flight 17 years ago and was hooked. “If someone had told me I would have the chance of being in the
same room as the man who penned these words I would not have believed it,” she said. Del got to meet her literary hero when he travelled from Los Angeles, where he now lives, to attend the launch of the Bleeding London project on May 17, 2014. In the morning, Del arranged a meeting of 16 photographers
Facing economic realities: resident Dave Miller
Lifelong resident: Sarah Clark at the Excalibur estate
Jane Hearn shows the memory wall to a young visitor
Life carries on: Mum of two Nicola Cowdery
at the endangered “bungalow estate” in Catford – an area of 187 pre-fabricated homes erected immediately after the Second World War. The Excalibur estate is due to be flattened and redeveloped by London & Quadrant, but the plan has been fiercely opposed by residents and as yet the work has not been carried out. The photographers split into four groups to document every street and alleyway on the estate, aided by Jane Hearn, a volunteer at one of the homes
every house on the estate for a ‘memory wall’. “Really, the pre-fabs were the most successful social housing
which has been turned into a museum dedicated to the prefabs. Jane received a £7000 grant
“The project is about what London looks and feels like today” from The Media Trust to work with the public, and engage digitally with the area and its surroundings. Part of the project involves photographing
project our country has ever had,” she said. “They had an inside bathroom and toilet, a fitted kitchen, hot running water, built-in cupboards and plenty of
space. These were unusual luxuries in 1946. The pre-fabs were only meant to last ten years, but they are still in use today.” It was easy to see their lasting appeal. Each bungalow had a good-sized garden, and the estate was extremely peaceful in the hazy sunshine when the photographers came to visit. Resident Dave Miller explained the economic realities facing many inhabitants. “The rent now is £90 a week, but in the Continued on Page 2