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
Scenes from the book: Contemporary Times photographer Stewart Wall extracted descriptions of nearly 100 typical London scenes from just one chapter in Geoff’s book titled “The Walker’s Diary, the vast and detailed”. He set out to capture images to fit the descriptions including: Models of London buses, a row of empty buses, fish stalls and shouting men
Your mission, if you choose to accept it ...
Continued from Page 1
L&Q development, the rent on most two bedroom places would probably be £180 a week. People are worried about hitting the benefit cap and not having enough to live on.” Whether the residents would hit the benefit cap threshold of £500 a week was unclear, but the fear is very real. Dave is making plans to leave the area completely if he is forced out. The photographers were joined in their tour of the bungalow estate by Bleeding London author Geoff, who was using an Olympus OMD EM-10. The camera was donated by Olympus to be awarded to the winner of the project’s points league. “I used to have a Zenith B camera,” said Geoff. “It was very solid and heavy. The lens was very good. It came in a real leather case that had an incredible smell. The case alone probably weighed more than some modern-day cameras. “Bleeding London was my third or fourth book I had written. It was a book I had been thinking about for a long time. When I lived in Sheffield, I would find people who had been to London once. They never wanted to go there again. That was enough for them. I later moved to a little cottage in Yoxford, Suffolk, and
Favourite London meal: Geoff takes a photograph to show his American friends back home
Author Geoff Nicholson talks to some of the attendees about the Oympus OMD EM-10. From left, Geoff, Tad Dippel, Dave Flynn, Del Barrett (seated), Kim Teasdale, Jonathan Taylor and Peter Ellis
Warm evening: attendees at The Cave sit outside many people there felt exactly the same. They had been to London once, and yet they were only a 50-minute train ride away.”
After a pub lunch, the photographers split up again to explore London’s many varied streets, and met up again, joined by many others, at RPS
London’s venue, The Cave, in Greenwich for the official launch of the project, and a dinner of pie, mash and liquor sauce.
“If you have written as many novels as some of us have, you find that some crash and burn, some take on a life of their own and sometimes they develop
a second or third life,” said Geoff, at the launch. “When Del emailed me out of the blue to say let’s make it into a photographic project, I said sure, but
did I believe it? It has been a thrill and an enormous pleasure to join in this project and walk my “square” (of the London A to Z). Some places were familiar
and some alien, with many places being demolished and rebuilt. The city is entirely unrecognisable in some respects, but the photographic project is about how London looks and feels like today.” To find out how to join in the project, email Del at London@rps.org