London Index Project II

Here are some recent pictures from my London Index project.

Taking these pictures has certainly made me think about the morality of what I'm doing. The last picture is of the aftermath of an accident where a pedestrian has been knocked down. At first glance, it looks like nothing is happening. When you then notice the police tape and look closer still at the smashed windscreen of the car it becomes clear something shocking has taken place.

I'd taken the picture before realising exactly what had happened. Now I'm not sure how I feel about including it. Someone was injured to an unknown extent. The driver of the car is out of sight and living the first few terrible minutes of one of the most significant events of their lives. It's easy to imagine the tragedy unfolding. 

It makes me think of the times I have retreated from taking pictures I know I wouldn't be comfortable showing to a wider audience. My most vivid memory is that of a young man sat on the steps to a building just south of Kensington High Street. He had blood streaming from his nose. As I passed him, we looked at each other and I instantly knew I couldn't possibly put my camera between us and take his picture. He was too vulnerable and I too shy.

I've missed a sobbing girl running toward her boyfriend, arguments, fights, incapable drunks, virtually all the rawest moments you can imagine. I've ruminated over them all wondering whether I should or shouldn't have pushed the shutter. The thing I can't resolve is whether these moments are, despite their location, public or private.

I want to make a balanced document of this city and I have to Include the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. However, I can't do this without feeling a sense of respect for whoever I'm pointing the camera at. I'm in perpetual awe at the fact that Londoners continue to rub along together despite their differences. I think it's only achieved by the vast majority of people living here being fundamentally good human beings. Editing their lives by capturing them in a fraction of a second sometimes doesn't seem fair.

London Index Project

For the last few years I've been working on a street photography project of London.

I've lived here for over thirteen years and for the majority of that time my main mode of transport has been Public. For the first few years, the only physical knowledge I had of the city was measured in time and by the tube map.

Since then, my current job has allowed me to travel through the streets on a daily basis, seeing its people and its buildings in relation to one another and to photograph the fleeting moments that happen while history is slowly being made.

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The viewpoint I've had is from the passenger seat of a vehicle, which has made this city into one long film. I'm being dragged through an endless projection of events which sees time marked in both its ephemeral immediacy and its grinding unstoppable plod. I've made myself a custodian of both by recording some trace elements of the millions of events that happen every single second, of every single minute, of every single day. A tiny fraction of the hundreds of years of things happened, happening and about to happen.

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Each image is layered with strata of time. I've caught the present by freezing an individual at a particular moment in time, who is then set against the background of the city which could be weeks, months or even centuries old.

London, like any city, is like an organism; constantly in a state of decay and regeneration. I've tried to make a document which reflects that change while considering the possibility that the pictures I'm taking may be viewed by an audience decades from now.

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I've titled each picture with its date stamp. The exact moment in time it was taken.

This collection is intended to be a book. Hopefully, one of many books called London Index.

I'll be adding these and other images to my website in due course. Check here.

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