URBAN SPRAWL
Archway, north London, is teeming with bizarre, wonderful and terrifying people. Multiple social narratives interact with each other and create a very diverse collective space, appearing to exist on the fringes of the city with seemingly little to define it. I wanted to capture the tiny, ephemeral moments that came out of the days I spent there. The use of film was a perfect platform for this, irreversibly documenting my observations, not always in my favour. I placed an emphasis on the architectural aspects of the place; there is a strange beauty in the heavy, concrete buildings that
confront the skyline, with odd little details such as a flower filled phone box littering each street. Whilst shooting I encountered kindness and hostility in equal measure. One family forced me to destroy two rolls of film as they thought I was taking pictures of their children, chasing me down the street threatening to call the police. A lot of stories were lost with those films, but I feel this added to my understanding of photography and the place itself. Others, such as Michael and Dean (pictured on pages 5 and 15) were more than willing to have their pho-
tographs taken to be “put in the magazines,” happy they felt thier stories were worth documenting. The power of photography to instil a sense of importance and fame or paranoia and animosity was most poignant in the development of this project. I find these small urban “towns” and their stories interesting, their detachment from the glamour of central London lending itself to the atmosphere of a small town despite being reasonably central; brimming with tiny moments just happening and tiny moments just gone.
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