Work in Progress

The work is being shot across the whole of London through the windows of buses.

This work is designed to look at the topography and migrations of London: To explore the increasing diversity of a major Western metropolis as the movement of people continues to change both the urban landscape and the community within it.

London, at the forefront of multi-cultural assimilation in Europe allows a privileged point of observation for the possible shape of other European cities.

Rules of interaction and proximity are changing, between what the French anthropologist Marc Augè calls non-places, public spaces designed for people to move through in solitude but without isolation, layered against an organic historical city with deep traditions, where old and new are interwoven.

It is this space that fascinates me, this migration of people around this very open and public arena, but also a migration that has reached a target, the holy grail of the imagined Western urban dream.
It is this new highly fragmented sense of community that the work investigates.


Having spent several years living abroad, about a year ago I decided to move back to London. Although London has always been a dynamic city with a changing demographic, I was really surprised by the speed of change in the makeup of the population and the landscape of the city.

I grew up in London and as a teenager I used to wander through the city by bus with friends. In many ways it was an excuse to go to places I had no real reason or purpose.
London’s double decker buses are the perfect “vehicle or vessel” to explore and transverse a complex and vast city, to frame it.

It has the advantage of allowing me two perspectives or levels of observation, the lower and upper decks.
From this vantage point I can capture the complex phenomenon of urban stratification, how different people use the city through the day, how new layers of architecture, signage and street furniture add to what was already there. How different social, economic and ethnic groups appropriate, shape and adapt to the city.

With buses I do not have full control, the random nature of where the bus stops and my position to what is in front of me is not to dissimilar to the encounters we have as we move through the city.
I become, as the people I observe, part of the city system where thousands of individual paths cross randomly.
A community of invisibility and but also voyeurism. But not only is the passer-by invisible, but I, as the photographer becomes a voyeur, become invisible to the outside, like the CCTV cameras in London that follow our every moves.

Nonetheless my photography is not detached; I try to capture and understand the emotional content of London’s everyday migrations, rhythms and rituals. For I am part of this rhythm and community, it is also my distance and attachment, for it is my community, my security, my home.