Photographing London


black and white, grainy 35mm picture of Wood Green station.

Haringey Born And Raised

I’ve shot London over the years. On 35mm. On Super 8mm. On 16mm. DV, Mini-DV, HDV, 4K. I’ve been lucky enough to work in many studios, big and small and on many sets not to mention on location all over London at different stages of my life.

Black and white image of a crowded platform at Tottenham Court Road Station, Northern Line, in August 2001.
Black and white image of a group of people on a crowded platform at Tottenham Court Road Station, Northern Line, in August 2001.
A Black and white looking down Oxford street outside Tottenham Court Road Station in August 2001.
A black and white image of a homeless man asleep behind Tottenham Court Road Station in August 2001.

(Tottenham Court Road, August 2001)

One of my favourite films I ever made was a very London heavy music documentary called Bassweight. Once we finished that film I felt a big chapter of my London life was done. I was born in North, I worked in East, I was living in West and hanging out in South. I felt all city and I needed something new (not long later I moved to South-East Asia for a decade).

Grey And Monochromatic

London is a grey city which lends itself to a monochromatic palette. It has some great clouds, a tube system that I’m addicted to shooting and there’s a lot of glass about. Now of course you can shoot London in very creative and colourful ways. A good friend, Cinema Iloobia always has such great ways of photographing and filming when he is here.

There are many photographers and filmmakers who know how to document the city in multicoloured, vivid ways. I just find it easier to switch off, embrace the crap weather and let my subconscious take over.

Black and white image of a train pulling up to the platform at Tottenham Court Road Station, Northern Line in February 2022.
Black and white image taken from the national portrait gallery of a cloudy day at trafalgar square with nelson's column in the middle.

Peoples Person

I’m not an architecture guy or a landscape person. I don’t even consider myself a photographer. I simply like pictures and more often I like pictures of people. It’s partly why I got into documentary film-making and it helps that I’m happy going up to randoms in the street to shoot a portrait. 

But I’ve never been comfortable shooting portraits here in London. I seem to have a weird ‘don’t piss on your doorstep’ attitude when it comes to approaching people. Probably because it’s my back yard and as a so-called moody Londoner, I’m not one to engage with people. So weirdly enough, London as a location pushes me out of my comfort zone  to make me shoot more experimentally. It makes me try different things and attempt to come up with a different way of viewing what I know so well.  

Black and white image of a man wearing a beanie hat on Endymion road in Haringey.
Black and white image of a bearded man leaning on a lamp-post on Endymion road in Haringey.

(Two good friends of mine, Carter & Don Grizz)


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