Archive for the ‘London’ Category

.. At the finale of their folksy choreography, the men stretched up with hankies towards the bunting – a tribal worship to the national divinity like pagan prayers in neolithic Stonehenge.


Look Right

01Feb13

The City was reliving its daily ritual, evolving since ancient times. Merchants and passing traders, carts hauling the produce brought in from outside the city walls.


Not far from where Barbara Hepworth’s bronze Divided Circle once impressed us before its brutal execution, a Peace Pillar between two Cabbage Palms with the words ‘May Peace Prevail on Earth’ – looks overwhelmed, a Hiroshima-inspired memorial being buried in the depths of a nuclear winter.


Everyday street spectacles: Tragic fires or the rioting mob, there are countless, similarly documented events in this century that bring nearer the sum total of an organic metropolis. Throughout the ages London has itself repeated – scenarios forever rewound. In the aftermath of the Blitz, bomb sites reverted to nature with species not seen since genteel Tudor times.


“The first thing I remember seeing outside the station was the Zeus-scaled statue of Athens wonder woman Kelly Holmes though at first I thought my arrival was too late until I realised she was in fact being slowly dismembered – a good omen for this grand tour of Olympic Lilliput. In its place would be the steps leading up to the new Westfield shopping mall – an early example of things to come where the messages of health through sport inevitably now yields to the branding of Big Macs.”


Sacred Acres

20Jun12

“When the Norman King William commissioned the Domesday book in 1086, the land that is now Stratford was a hotbed of industry: Gunpowder; distilling and timber milling.. These are now brand havens, sacred acres, protected by Rapier surface-to-air missiles and walkie-talkie foot patrols.


Bling Humbug

09Dec11

‘Tis the season of austerity so wishing to sound absolutely humbuggery – there really should be EU laws against this.


16.05pm

29Oct11

“So then the blonde in red comes along and drops her Oyster card and I hope she’s going to notice, going to turn around and do what I yearn will be something special. Something does make her stop and it’s all done and dusted in a few seconds.”


Renaissance

03Oct11

You may find this grandee still puffing himself up as before but as my personal work is becoming more centred once again on street photography and the quirks of urban landscape, I imagine that from now on, these will form the basis of this blog.