Orlando Gili

Experiencing Smithfield at night is a bit like uncovering a parallel world that operates in the shadows, while the rest of London sleeps. There’s a sense of frenetic energy and unpredictability: forklifts whizz past men in long jackets hunched over neatly stacked boxes, punching numbers into calculators and fielding phone calls. Many of the businesses are family run and there’s clearly a strong sense of camaraderie. Inside the tall Victorian halls, behind large glass windows, carcasses are hacked into pieces at literally breakneck speed. It is a physical analogue space with something of a masculine atmosphere. I visited Smithfield on early winter mornings to develop a portrait series that celebrates the people behind the market. Night workers provide an under-appreciated role in meeting the demands of the 24/7 modern city, risking significant damage to their health. But in five years time – after more than 800 years of trading meat in central London – the market will relocate to a £1 billion high-tech behemoth on the fringe of the capital, in Dagenham, as part of a wider trend to sanitise inner cities with less palatable aspects of urban life kept out of sight. These photographs document the last generation of butchers working on the historic site. Photograph: Orlando GiliTony, pig meat seller   Photograph: Orlando GiliAdam, butcher   Photograph: Orlando Gili Photograph: Orlando GiliKye, unloader   Photograph: Orlando GiliMark, chicken salesmen Photograph: Orlando

There’s nothing quite like the simple pleasure of getting stuck into a good book. From TikTok bookshelf tours, sad girls books and the Brontë Bros (a.k.a Timothée Chalamet and Jacob Elordi), Marc Jacobs and his reading hour or Dua Lipa’s Service95 Book Club, if you didn’t already know, reading is cool again. Or, as Kaia Gerber said earlier this year, ‘reading is so sexy’. A whopping 669 million physical books were sold in the UK last year, the highest overall level ever recorded, and visits to libraries are up 71 percent. Spotted on morning commutes, sprawled across a bench and reclining in a deck chair, there’s no hotter accessory than a paperback this summer. But which books are Londoners loving the most this season? Photographer Orlando Gili took to the streets to find out. Here’s what he found, from Graham Swift and Ali Hazelwood to Richard Osman. The Satsuma Complex by Bob Mortimer Photograph: Orlando Gili Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift Photograph: Orlando Gili To Kill the Truth by Sam Bourne Photograph: Orlando Gili The Machine Stops and Other Stories by EM Forster  Photograph: Orlando Gili   Aquinas Among the Protestants by Manfred Syensson and David VanDrunen  Photograph: Orlando Gili A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J Maas Photograph: Orlando Gili Butter by Asako Yuzuki Photograph: Orlando Gili Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh  Photograph: Orlando Gili   Curationism: How Curating Took Over the Art World and Everything Else by David