ONE OF THE BASIC situationist practices is the dérive [literally: “drifting”], a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances. Dérives involve playful-constructive behaviour and awareness of psychogeographical effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll.
In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there. Chance is a less important factor in this activity than one might think: from a dérive point of view cities have psychogeographical contours, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes that strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones.
-- Guy Debord, Theory of the Dérive, Les Lèvres Nues #9 (1956) reprinted in Internationale Situationniste #2 (1958)
Dérive #1:
This dérive took place on Friday 22nd April 2022 in central London. I had dropped off some colour film to be developed and had approximately two hours to kill. I set off in the late morning with a roll of black and white film loaded in my camera, deciding to north east from Covent Garden but with no particular destination in mind. I waited until I had reached a less familiar part of the city before I began making images. Although I was not lost, I followed the light rather than heading down streets I knew. I was hoping to encounter new sights, sounds, smells and textures (perhaps tastes too?) as I drifted with no particular destination in mind. Two hours would enable me to travel a fair distance and return to pick up my negatives later that afternoon.
Using black and white film meant that I was less drawn to effects of colour. Instead, I paid attention to the way that light was falling on certain surfaces and objects, their patterns, textures and tones. I noticed the changes in architecture, the materials used on building facades, the light falling across street corners, the shapes of signs as they disrupted my view, signs on walls, advertising images, shop fronts and the collision of natural and human-made surfaces. The first image, which is the first on the roll and therefore not fully visible, depicts a roadside sign with the text "New Era". This was a happy accident. Other language based signs include the names of streets and buildings, graffiti and a warning.
Using black and white film meant that I was less drawn to effects of colour. Instead, I paid attention to the way that light was falling on certain surfaces and objects, their patterns, textures and tones. I noticed the changes in architecture, the materials used on building facades, the light falling across street corners, the shapes of signs as they disrupted my view, signs on walls, advertising images, shop fronts and the collision of natural and human-made surfaces. The first image, which is the first on the roll and therefore not fully visible, depicts a roadside sign with the text "New Era". This was a happy accident. Other language based signs include the names of streets and buildings, graffiti and a warning.
I enjoyed discovering this sign in the doorway of a hospital:
RESEARCH Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power
I really enjoyed my aimless wandering, following my nose (as well as my eyes) through mostly unfamiliar streets in Bloomsbury. I would occasionally recognise a place but I was keen to turn in directions that took me into unfamiliar territory. I was never completely lost but I enjoyed the feeling of liberation that came with purposeless drifting (beyond making photographs). It helped that the weather was fine and that the sunlight created many exciting visual effects on the surfaces of the city. It was enough to let these effects guide my steps - the shadow of a tree on a building, a reflection of a window on the street. I think my pictures, shown here in the order in which I took them, do a decent job of recording what I saw and the way that photographs transform the thing seen. They tell a kind of story but could just as easily be presented in a different order to tell a different kind of story (or no story at all).
I intend to continue to find time to carry out more dérives like this in the future and I am keen to find out more about the ideas of the Situationists and the practice of psychogeography.
I intend to continue to find time to carry out more dérives like this in the future and I am keen to find out more about the ideas of the Situationists and the practice of psychogeography.
Dérive #2:
On Sunday 24th April 2022 I conducted a dérive in Bermondsey and Rotherhithe, beginning and ending in Southwark Park. I used a manual SLR (Nikon FM) and colour film (Kodak proimage 100). The images are presented in the order in which I took them. Walls and other surfaces feature prominently but I was also struck by various signs and natural forms - trees and birds (alive and dead). The area is currently experiencing gentrification but there is still plenty of evidence of the remnants of a close-knit, working class community. The pictures, perhaps, generate a slightly gloomy atmosphere, suggested by physical decay, emptiness and death - the cemetery, DE-ATH Brothers sign and decapitated pigeon. However, there is often beauty and humour to be found in these remains, signs of quiet resilience in the face of rampant neoliberalism - you can visit Passion 4 Tyres and Fancy Dress Town and, if all else fails, "The Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still."
Research: Psychogeography & The Situationist International
The dérive was a Situationist strategy, designed to liberate city dwellers from the constant demands of capitalism. To drift aimlessly through the city, rather than be tempted by adverts to consume, was an act of resistance. Along the way, the drifter would respond to situations, moments of heightened awareness in which their mundane surroundings would become alive and stimulating. The drifter would feel engaged and active, more in tune with their surroundings. The dérive is therefore part of a wider practice referred to as psychogeography, what Joseph Hart has referred to as:
a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities…just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape.
The following radio documentary 'Walking with Attitude' explores the practice of psychogeography:
I am interested in both the dérive, specifically, and, more broadly, the practice of psychogeography. I feel that photographs can be a way to document my walks through the city. When I notice something that heightens my awareness of the space I am in, I can take a photograph. When I look back through these images later, I can recall the feeling I had when I made the image and re-connect with the space. Since taking a picture is always a pleasurable feeling, I am interested in the distance between the image and the memory of the space it documents. Situationism grew out of the Letterist International, an earlier collective of young radicals, who first proposed the notion of the dérive:
The Letterist International invent a new kind of knowledge, a street ethnography, whose primary method is the dérive. What the dérive discovers is psychogeography: the lineaments of intersubjective space. In place of the chance encounters of the surrealists, they create a practice of play and strategy which invents a way of being, outside of commodified time and outside of the separate disciplines of knowledge including geography. Henceforth the city will not be a site for fieldwork but a playing field, in which to discover intimations of a space and time outside the division of labour. The goal is nothing less than to invent a new civilisation.
-- McKenzie Wark, The Beach Beneath the Street, 2011
I'm also interested in the idea of the city as a space for "play and strategy" and the idea of walking in urban spaces as disinterested time, a rejection of commodity culture. Since my walks have little purpose or direction (other than to enjoy the spaces I inhabit and the process of making photographs) the time spent on them could be seen as a small act of resistance, a way to escape the constant pressure to buy things or be productive. Perhaps this is a form if indulgence and privilege, since not everyone is able to spare the time it takes to make these dérives. I'm also conscious of the relative safety afforded me as a white man. Are these dérives a waste of time? I am sensitive to such criticisms and appreciate my privileged position. Nevertheless, I believe that all city dwellers could choose to take the time to occupy the streets and parks in this way, to pay attention to the environment and be present as free citizens rather than just as consumers. I also like the idea that dérives encourage citizens to get to know their city, to leave the confines of their particular post code and to encounter surprising situations in unfamiliar surroundings. And taking a camera might help to increase the drifter's sensitivity to their surroundings, helping them to notice the subtle shifts of atmosphere between one locale and another, what photographer Stephen Shore refers to as "a state of heightened awareness" in which it's possible to look "with clear and focused attention."
Dérive #3:
On Saturday 30th April 2022 my dérive began at Peckham Rye train station and ended, a few hours later, at the Elephant and Castle. The images are presented here in reverse order. I enjoyed observing the ways in which the people of the area have adapted and interacted with the physical environment. Like most of London, wealth and poverty exist side-by-side. Public spaces are generally well looked after. Beautiful green spaces punctuate the dense housing. Old working class neighbourhoods, like East Street, have retained their character but have also been given a subtle marketing make-over. It might not be possible to buy live chickens and puppies here, as it was in the 1970s, but the market is still vibrant, noisy and filled with inexpensive produce. The inevitable process of gentrification is threatening to replace old social housing stock with shiny new properties but local people are resisting. Elephant Park is a monstrous new development and the massive shopping centre has finally been demolished. Camberwell and Walworth Roads both tell a story of change and continuity. These pictures were shot with a Minolta XE7 SLR on Kodak Portra 400 and Kodak Proimage 100 film. Approximately 3.5 miles Mostly flat Sunny 15 - 17 ° |
Can photographs communicate how we respond to a place? They can indicate what we noticed, but how are these images then 'read' by others? Guy Debord, the main theorist of the Situationists and author of Theory of the Dérive, cast doubts on the process:
The sectors of a city…are decipherable, but the personal meaning they have for us is incommunicable, as is the secrecy of private life in general, regarding which we possess nothing but pitiful documents.
-- Guy Debord, A Critique of Separation, 1961
However, the practice of walking aimlessly through the city can be traced back through history. Writers like William Blake, Daniel Defoe, Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire and, more recently, Iain Sinclair and Will Self, have all wandered through urban spaces attempting to capture their specific atmospheres. Only recently has the contribution of women to this tradition been recognised, for example in Lauren Elkin's book Flâneuse: Women Walk the City.
For a woman to be a flâneuse, first and foremost, she’s got to be a walker – someone who gets to know the city by wandering its streets, investigating its dark corners, peering behind façades, penetrating into secret courtyards. Virginia Woolf called it “street haunting” in an essay by that name...
Psychogeography seems to be associated with (or made possible by) a certain kind of liberty (or privilege). Walking alone in a city, and perhaps getting lost along the way, can be dangerous. It's no surprise that this has been traditionally a male pursuit. There are also ethical issues related to appropriate subjects. Who has the right to look at whom, for example? Nevertheless, if the city belongs to all of us, rather than just the bankers, company bosses, politicians, property developers and marketing executives, shouldn't we attempt to (re)claim it by walking its streets, unconstrained by maps, directions and invitations to consume? Added to this is photography's ability to heighten our awareness, to help us connect to the locations we discover, to focus our sight and help us attune to the particular atmosphere of a place. Psychophotogeography?
Dérive #4:
This dérive began at Kidbrooke Train Station where I began listening to an audiobook version of Virginia Woolf's novel 'Mrs Dalloway'. The book opens with Clarissa Dalloway walking through the streets of London, making preparations for her party later that evening. The narration is characterised by an internal stream-of-consciousness as Clarissa observes her surroundings and reflects on her life and relationships. She is excited by the city streets and is a famous literary walker. Here is a typical extract from the opening of the novel:
One feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can't be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life. In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment in June. |
Once I had dropped off some film to be developed in Covent Garden, I decided to wander north west. I photographed anything that caught my interest, trying to keep Virginia Woolf's descriptions of the delights of "ordinary things" in mind. I drifted up to Bloomsbury, not far from where Woolf lived and worked, and over to Oxford Street before heading back south through Soho, past the Eid festivities in Trafalgar Square and a Falun Gong parade on St. Martin's Lane, to collect my negatives. The photographs were made with an Olympus OM2n and Ilford XP2 black and white film.
Approx. 3 miles
Mostly flat
Cloudy with occasional sunshine
16 - 18 °
Approx. 3 miles
Mostly flat
Cloudy with occasional sunshine
16 - 18 °
Dérive #5:
This dérive began at Victoria train station, then south via Tate Britain, across Lambeth Bridge via Lambeth Palace, via Old Paradise Gardens and Lambeth Walk, then up to Lambeth North station and on to Waterloo East for the train home.
I'd not visited Old Paradise Gardens before so this was a delightful discovery. It's the site of an old graveyard (the gravestones are to be found now leaning against the garden walls) and former slum, housing the workers in the Victorian factories that sprang up all along the south bank of the Thames. Recently, residents have fought and won a battle against a property developer to create a new high rise estate of luxury flats on the site of the gardens. There is a great deal of opposition to gentrification in Lambeth and Southwark and local people are rightly keen to protect their green spaces. The new plan is to link up a series of green spaces near the park to include the Garden Museum at Lambeth Palace. This dérive was split equally north and south of the river. Victoria and Pimlico to the north seemed much busier, more commercial and designed for entertainment. Lambeth to the south seemed quieter, more residential and relaxed although this atmosphere changed again, to become really vibrant and noisy, near Waterloo Station. The pictures were made with an Olympus OM2N and Kodak Portra 160 colour film. Approx. 2.5 miles Mostly flat Sunny 18 ° |
The Maps
I'm interested in the shapes made by the mapping lines of each dérive and what they look like superimposed on one another:
Perhaps these might be used in some way to help document the project alongside the photos.
Paul Auster's City of Glass
New York was an inexhaustible space, a labyrinth of endless steps, and no matter how father walked, no matter how well he came to know its neighbourhoods and streets, it always left him with the feeling of being lost. Lost, not only in the city, but within himself as well. Each time he took a walk, he felt as though he were leaving himself behind, and by giving himself up to the movement of the streets, by reducing himself to a seeing eye, he was able to escape the obligation to think, and this, more than anything else, brought him a measure of peace, a salutary emptiness within. The world was outside of him, around him, before him, and the speed with which it kept changing made it impossible for him to dwell on any one thing for very long. Motion was of the essence, the act of putting one foot in front of the other and allowing himself to follow the drift of his own body. By wandering aimlessly, all places became equal and it no longer mattered where he was. On his best walks, he was able to feel that he was nowhere. And this, finally, was all he ever asked of things: to be nowhere. New York was the nowhere he had built around himself, and he realised that he had no intention of ever leaving it again.
― Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy
'City of Glass' by Paul Auster is the first of three novels which have been collected together as 'The New York Trilogy'. The novel plays with the detective genre and includes ideas related to psychogeographical explorations of the city. The novel was later adapted into a graphic novel. In one episode, the protagonist, Quinn, follows the subject of his investigations through the streets of New York. He begins to notice a pattern. Here are some relevant pages from the graphic novel version which illustrate this part of the story:
Sophie Calle
I really like the idea of using the city as a kind of code, writing messages using walks through the city streets for another person to interpret. Obviously, this would be easier in a city with a grid-based street map. I'm also interested in the idea of following another drifter, being led by that person rather than choosing the route myself. My research about this idea led me to the work of Sophie Calle, specifically her Suite Venitienne. I'm interested in the way this work has been shared in book and exhibition form, combining text and image:
For months I followed strangers on the street. For the pleasure of following them, not because they particularly interested me. I photographed them without their knowledge, took note of their movements, then finally lost sight of them and forgot them. At the end of January 1980, on the streets of Paris, I followed a man whom I lost sight of a few minutes later in a crowd. That very evening, quite by chance, he was introduced to me at an opening. During the course of our conversation, he told me he was planning an imminent trip to Venice.
-- Sophie Calle, Suite Venitienne, 1980-96
I like the way Calle yields responsibility for the location and direction of her dérives through Venice to the mysterious stranger. We might refer to this kind of behaviour now as stalking, which obviously has very negative connotations. But Calle's purpose seems more philosophical and/or conceptual than motivated by frustrated romantic desire. The extent to which she felt able to surrender her own freedom in this project is impressive and a little troubling. It's no surprise that Paul Auster and Sophie Calle have collaborated, resulting in Calle's book Double Game, an experiment in merging fact and fiction.
I'm not sure if Calle's process could be described as psychogeography but I am fascinated by the combination of chance and control, serendipity and organisation that accompanies most aspects of her early work. She appears to be comfortable with a high degree of chance, whereas the Situationists insisted that their technique of the dérive was unlike the chance-based wanderings of the Surrealists before them. It would be interesting to boroow Calle's technique on my next dérive. |
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Lewis Bush's City of Dust
I was excited to discover this zine by photographer Lewis Bush. City of Dust concerns the gentrification of London and the massive growth of luxury developments. Bush walks the city with his medium format camera, constructing a visual memory palace, inspired by Soloman Shereshevsky, one of the few people in history thought to have a near perfect memory. The pictures are presented like illustrations to an undelivered lecture about the history of London, clues about its past, evidence of the present and a dire warning about the future. Specs of the city's dust can be seen on the printed pages and yet the dust of history is slowly being swept away by glossy, impenetrable, high-rise buildings designed for the rich. Where will young, working class Londoners live? Who will own the city centre streets of the future?
The Flaneur
I discovered this article about the flaneur in a magazine of the same name. The entire publication is devoted to exploring a street in Berlin and is part of a series, each focusing on a single street in various cities across the world. The article presents a useful history of the word "flaneur" and its use by various cultural actors, including Guy Debord of The Situationists. Interestingly, the author identifies a political dimension to flaneuring:
In an era in which we have become increasingly dependent on public transport, distracted by technology and held captive in offices, the resultant loss of intimacy with our built environments and diminished lack of orienting skills seems critical, making walking as an act inherently political.
Dérive #6:
This dérive began at Lewisham train station in the mid afternoon of 20th May 2022. I veered off Lewisham Way towards Brookmill Park which hugs the banks of the River Ravensbourne, a tributary of The Thames. The rivers converge at Deptford Creek further north. I've lived in this area for a long time but never visited the park before. The river is very shallow, not much more than a trickle, shaded by well established trees. The park is a bit secluded and overgrown. I saw several cyclists and the odd pedestrian, some people standing next to the river and enjoying the peaceful atmosphere. I left the park and walked up Brookmill Road to Deptford Bridge, then onto Deptford High Street. Turning left, I passed the Albany Theatre and the remains of the street market. It was a pleasant, sunny day (after a long period of rain) and a few people were still rummaging through the various items left behind by the traders - presumably the stuff it was impossible to sell. At the end of Douglas Way I turned right and eventually looped back round to New Cross.
On a whim, I decided to visit the Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art to see the Virginia Overton exhibition. After seeing the show, I walked back down Lewisham Way to my starting point at the train station, where I caught a bus home. The pictures were taken with a Leica R4 camera and Ilford XP2 black and white film. Approx. 3 miles Mostly flat Sun and patchy cloud 17 ° |
Dérive #7:
Dérive #7 began at Dalston Junction train station, continued through London Fields and Broadway Road Market, back towards Columbia Road, then skirted Spitalfields Market and ended at Aldgate underground station.
This part of East London has undergone massive gentrification since the 1990s. A largely working class area, popular with immigrants and artists because of the relatively low cost of good housing, has now become one of the most sought after residential areas in the whole city. Parts of the area still have a Dickensian quality. Large villas, tree-lined boulevards and well-established parks are punctuated by high rise social housing estates but many of these flats have been sold off and new, expensive-looking apartment blocks are springing up at a dizzying rate. Markets like Broadway Road, Columbia Road and Spitalfields are filled with fancy goods, fresh produce and flanked with artisan shops. Ridley Road Market, by contrast, a bit further north, retains some of its working class atmosphere. Spitalfields is the epicentre of the regeneration zone and Aldgate is now dominated by massive new office and residential developments. An advert for Printworks London, a nightclub and events venue in Rotherhithe (admittedly not in Hackney) has the message "Spoon's (sic) is cheaper" scrawled across it. Further south, a poster in an art gallery invites us to "COME IN FOR BOOBS". Consequently, Dalston and Clapton, to the north, are now experiencing the regeneration effect as people are priced out further south. The pictures, taken on a Leica R4 with Kodak Portra 160 colour film, record surfaces and objects seen along the route: a smashed car windscreen and milk splash; signs emptied of instructions; references to the City; splashes of red and pink against the green of parks and gardens; the facade of a listed building strangely suspended in front of the modern block behind. Approx. 4 miles Flat Sunny 20 ° |
The Beach Beneath the Street
I was keen to learn more about the Situationists and their practice of the dérive. Wark's book 'The Beach Beneath the Street" was an entertaining read, although I found some of ideas and observations a bit complex. I was really struck by the frequent references to play and the idea that play, in the context of the city, could be an antidote to consumerism. I love the idea in the title that, beneath the surface of what's visible at street level there exists another parallel world of uninhibited pleasure and fun, a sense of freedom and leisure.
The Letterist International invent a new kind of knowledge, a street ethnography, whose primary method is the dérive. What the dérive discovers is psychogeography: the lineaments of intersubjective space. In place of the chance encounters of the surrealists, they create a practice of play and strategy which invents a way of being, outside of commodified time and outside of the separate disciplines of knowledge including geography. Henceforth the city will not be a site for fieldwork but a playing field, in which to discover intimations of a space and time outside the division of labour. I found a reference to the architectural ideas of Aldo van Eyck who designed a series of abstract, geometric playgrounds for children in Amsterdam. He believed in the power of the threshold, "a landscape of place, occasion, threshold, an architecture in which to tarry."
For people who can linger there, the city enables times of full participation and rich experience. The city is when "associative awareness changes and extends perception, rendering it transparent and profound through memory and anticipation." The urban malingerer becomes aware of duration. Here time acquires depth and subtlety..." |
I wonder how I can incorporate a more playful quality into my photographic dérives? I remember seeing pictures by Nigel Henderson of children playing in the streets of Bethnal Green. Obviously, photographing playgrounds and the children using them is totally inappropriate but what if I could use some of the strategies children employ whilst playing in urban spaces? What would playful photographs look like? Would it be possible to re-insert the photographs made on my dérives back into the urban landscape to create "situations"? If the pictures themselves are not, in themselves, playful, how might they be displayed in a playful way?
Nigel Henderson: children playing in the street
Henderson's pictures were made in the East End of London, often on the steps of the house on Chisenhale Road where he lived. The streets seem relatively safe for the children (there would have been fewer cars in the 1950s) and the pictures suggest that the tarmac was used as a canvas and the street furniture as climbing apparatus. I really love the freedom and sense of fun in these pictures. The city would still have been recovering from the Blitz and people were doing their best to live in less than ideal conditions. The children, knowing no better, were simply doing their thing - making the most of the physical landscape and each other - having as much fun as possible. They don't seem particular surveilled by adults and no-one seems to mind that Henderson is making lots of photos of them.
I really like Henderson's own playful approach to image-making, seen in this picture (right) which he refers to as "stressed". Presumably the paper onto which the negative has been enlarged has been warped during the exposure (rather than lying flat) causing the image to buckle and stretch. |
Dérive #8:
This dérive hugged the south coast, the English Channel almost always in view. Having parked the car in Hastings Old Town, I began by exploring the beach, the fishing vessels and evidence of a thriving local industry. Hastings and St. Leonards-on-Sea pride themselves as being part of '1066 country', the scene of the only successful, large scale invasion of England by a foreign power. Nowadays, both towns are experiencing a different kind of invasion, the locals referring to the invaders as DFLs (Down From London). Due to the soaring cost of property in the capital, many Londoners have migrated to the Kent and Sussex coastal towns.
It was interesting moving from Hastings Old Town, with its winding alleyways, through the 1970s town centre and along the beach front to St Leonards' Regency architecture, before looping back. A famous local landmark is the Kino Teatr, an old cinema that now hosts a gallery and brasserie, as well as showing films. Punk pioneer Poly Styrene lived just behind the building and formed the band X-Ray Specs in Hastings in 1977. It must have been tough for her growing up as a mixed race kid in a predominantly white community in the 60s and 70s.
It was interesting moving from Hastings Old Town, with its winding alleyways, through the 1970s town centre and along the beach front to St Leonards' Regency architecture, before looping back. A famous local landmark is the Kino Teatr, an old cinema that now hosts a gallery and brasserie, as well as showing films. Punk pioneer Poly Styrene lived just behind the building and formed the band X-Ray Specs in Hastings in 1977. It must have been tough for her growing up as a mixed race kid in a predominantly white community in the 60s and 70s.
I wrenched the nylon curtains back |
I'd really like to return to both towns in the near future to explore the streets further inland. These pictures were made with a Nikon FM and a combination of Kodak Proimage100 and Portra 160 colour film.
Approx. 3 miles
Mostly flat
Cloudy with sun and rain
16 -18 °
Approx. 3 miles
Mostly flat
Cloudy with sun and rain
16 -18 °
Dérive #9:
Dérive #9 picked up where Dérive #7 ended, at Aldgate Station. I'd begun a roll of black and white film that day (some of them shot near the Elephant & Castle) so I had 17 left. I drifted south, through the city streets whose names and monuments evoke the Great Fire of London, Pudding Lane being the supposed epicentre of the blaze. Some of the street names were particularly evocative - Savage Gardens, Crutched Friars, Seething Lane, French Ordinary Court etc. I enjoyed taking various detours along the way, attracted by the street signs and the quality of light.
I reached the Monument to the Great Fire, which towers above the city. Again, the light was particularly beautiful at the base, partially illuminating the Latin inscriptions. Here's a translated extract from the South panel: Haste is seen everywhere, London rises again, whether with greater speed or greater magnificence is doubtful, three short years complete that which was considered the work of an age. I crossed London Bridge and on to Borough High Street, taking small detours down equally intriguing old alleys and housing estates, eventually looping back to the underground station. The pictures were taken with a Leica R4 on Ilford XP2super400 black and white film.
Approx. 1.5 miles Flat Sunny and dry 22 ° |