“For this marvellous city, of which such legends are related, was after all only of brick, and when the ivy grew over and trees and shrubs sprang up, and, lastly, the waters underneath burst in, this huge metropolis was soon overthrown.”
After London, Chapter V, Richard Jefferies (1885)
London is undoubtedly defined by its iconic landmarks. The Palace of Westminster, St Paul’s Cathedral, the bridges, the Thames, and in more recent times, the gleaming skyscrapers of the city itself have cast a spell for generations of artists – Canaletto, Monet, Whistler, Tissot, Derain, Turner – who have endeavoured to capture these scenes in engravings, prints and paintings.
This work considers London’s physical and cultural identity, and the symbolism of its paradigmatic landscapes, in a manner that interweaves dreamscapes, anthropocentrism and the temporality of our built environment.
All the photographs capture famous London scenes but in a departure from a preoccupation with populated landscapes, we are instead presented with empty, de-peopled vistas, in which life is suspended, disconnected from time and space.
Deliberately paradoxical, the photographs are tranquil, with a harmonious palette and chimerical atmosphere, but also taut and poised. The threat of climate catastrophe lingers like a shadow, as we are presented with a dissolving city, in which landmarks are unstable, out of reach, possibly reclaimed by water and where nature has triumphed over human ingenuity. In this way, the images are London and not London. They belong as much to a mythological notion of civilisation as to an objective reality; they speak of a life that feels like a dream, and visions that might yet come to being.