Kids, 2016
‘For me, street photography is it. It's what I want to do. It's almost impossible to run out of subjects as something different happens on the same street every day. London is full of surprises.’
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Pug Life, 2016
‘I started off using a Canon 450D and a long lens (50-200mm). It took me a while to build up enough confidence to ditch the lens and use a regular 18-55mm, getting closer to the people I wanted to photograph.’
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Sister Ray's, 2016
‘The Canon is a lovely camera but it’s bulky and people do see you coming when you’re using it, so a couple of years ago I switched to an Olympus EM5 which I absolutely love.
It’s smaller and easier to use and has a flip screen, so you can shoot from the hip and see what you're doing.’
It’s smaller and easier to use and has a flip screen, so you can shoot from the hip and see what you're doing.’
Pride, 2016
‘I’m fine with waiting for a person to notice me and photographing their reaction, but I'm not into the intrusive kind of street portraiture practiced by Bruce Gilden, which to me is all about sticking your camera right in someone's face – I wouldn't do that!’
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Metamorphosis, 2014
‘Two of my favourite street photographers are Martin Parr and Joel Meyerowitz. I could see from their work that street photography is not just about photographing people walking down the street.’
Dave's strut, 2016
‘It's about so much more – their surroundings, the light, the colour and humour in different situations. I didn't set out to emulate them, but I did have an idea of what I should be looking for when I was out shooting.’
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Singing in Shoreditch, 2015
‘As a city, London is fairly friendly to photographers. Most people I come across are very happy to have their photo taken – if they even see me doing it.
I've had a couple of instances where people have been very angry. The first time it happened it really put me off going out shooting and it took a while to go out on my own again.’
Red Stripe, 2016
‘I think maybe it helps that I’m female – I do know a few male photographers that have been in physical fights with people who didn't want their photo taken!’
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Distracted, 2015
‘If I were to give advice to aspiring street photographers, I would say practice, practice, practice. Getting out as regularly as you can builds your confidence and sharpens your eye.’
Skater Girl, Brick Lane, 2016
‘Photograph in a way you feel comfortable with at first then slowly push yourself out of your comfort zone - get closer to people, wait for eye contact, that kind of thing. Find your own style and don't let other people tell you what to do.’
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Shake a tail feather, 2016
‘And London is full of characters that are waiting to share their stories – and people who are less happy when you catch them doing something they shouldn't be! It's a fantastic city full of colour and diversity and I hope I'm shooting it for a long time yet.’
Shadow dancers, 2014
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Chapel Hill Market, 2012
Happy Shoppers, 2013
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Happy Coppers, 2014
Thinking caps on, 2013
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It's lit, 2012
City views blow away the blues, 2016
More photos
There's so much tradition to pack into December that it's no wonder Christmas seems to start before autumn does these days. London has always been crazy for Christmas, though – just check out the gallery below, which shows the city in festive trim as far back as 1956. All photos are from the Henry Grant Collection, held by the Museum of London. A large selection of the Museum’s collections are available to buy as prints from www.museumoflondonprints.com
RECOMMENDED: See our full festive guide to Christmas in London
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How do you sum up a city that changes its look as often as its underwear and always has plenty to say? It sounds impossible, but that’s the challenge we set ourselves when we decided to draw up a definitive list of the best photographs ever taken of the capital. In making our selection we had help. We couldn't do it all by ourselves, obviously. So we enlisted people like Wolfgang Tillmans, Juergen Teller, Nick Waplington, Dorothy Bohm and Eamonn McCabe. Those are just some of the names among the world-famous photographers who shaped our selection. We also picked the brains of the top London photography brass at museums including the Tate, V&A, Museum of London and Imperial War Museum. So it's not just our taste, it's their taste too. The result: a celebration of London’s architecture, its icons and its geography, but also of us: Londoners at work, at play, protesting, rising to a challenge and always ready for our close-up.
With thanks to: Dorothy Bohm, Michael Hoppen, Charlie Phillips, Dennis Morris, David Chandler, Helen Trompeteler, Tina Barney, Bruce Gilden, David Campany, Nick Waplington, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rob Greig, Simon Baker, Eamonn McCabe, Jim Dow, Alona Pardo, Martin Barnes, Brett Rogers, Juergen Teller, Fariba Farshad, Michael Benson, Anna Sparham, Hilary Roberts,
By Gabriel Coxhead, Matt Breen, Phoebe Trimingham and Martin Coomer
What gets us fixated on certain places? Why did a young photographer called Roger Mayne spend five years repeatedly photographing a single street in west London, visiting it 27 times and taking 1,400 photos?
Maybe it was the shock of the new: born in strait-laced Cambridge, Mayne was thrilled by the working-class kids of Southam Street in Ladbroke Grove. Maybe it was a sense of foreboding: as concrete estates wiped out the old terraces, Southam Street seemed like a place that would soon vanish. (It did, obliterated by the Trellick Tower in 1969.) Or was it something bigger and more transcendent? That’s the kind of question you’ll find yourself asking after stepping back in time at this new Mayne retrospective with Southam Street at its centre.
The Photographers’ Gallery exhibition charts Mayne’s travels across Britain, from bicycle factories in Nottingham and council estates in Sheffield to Brick Lane and Bermondsey. It also includes the first ever recreation of his photo installation ‘The British at Leisure’, commissioned for the Milan Triennale in 1964: five screens, 310 photo slides and a cool jazz soundtrack (nice).
‘These scenes from a lost city radiate history and absence’
But it was in the slums of North Kensington between 1956 and 1961 that Mayne (who died in 2014) found the perfect setting to produce what he called a ‘cinema of stills’: expressive, narrative, realist shots that helped to drag British documentary photography out of straight photojournalism.
Mayne...
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Back in the nineteenth century, various Victorian bigwigs decided to put on a massive exhibition showcasing Britain’s world-leading industrial technology. But there wasn’t anywhere big enough to house such a show, so one Joseph Paxton was commissioned to create the largest glass building ever seen. His ‘Crystal Palace’ popped up in Hyde Park for six months in 1851 and the Great Exhibition was a huge success. But what to do with the epic edifice after that? The solution: move it to Penge. The Crystal Palace was soon rebuilt on Sydenham Hill, with photographer Philip Henry Delamotte documenting the process.
Collage – The London Picture Archive
Set on Italian-style terraces in a new park full of fountains and sculptures, the building became a London landmark, hosting concerts, festivals, circuses, diplomatic receptions and even the world’s first cat show. Over the years, the surrounding area became known as Crystal Palace. But in 1936 the building burned to the ground, watched by 100,000 people. All that is left today are those Italianate terraces and the park’s famous dinosaur statues.
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