#MYLDN (1000)!

Me and my camera celebrating 1000 posts in my home town, my capital city, my london

https://vimeo.com/236450829 (if u can’t see vid above please click on this link to view)

And so I arrive at my 1000th MYLDN post. Difficult to imagine I have put that many photographs up but there you go. Numbers don’t lie. It clearly happened so I guess. The video above is a peek into a photography book featuring my favourite 100 shots so far.  The book tells the story of the changing face of this city and its inhabitants since I started this blog back in 2008. There is currently only one in existence but am hoping to get a publisher on board in some shape or form so hopefully will let you know in due course when it becomes available to buy.

My home town has altered massively since I began posting my daily shots and not necessarily altogether for the better. This daily series began as a photographic love letter to the city I was born and lived in and was intended to be a ongoing celebration of the rich diversity of cultures and culture in this non-stop city. Over time it became an observation of the gentrification process and the impact it had on the population of London. A city that I felt was defined by being inclusive to anyone from anywhere who wanted to have a go, it slowly then quickly became an exclusive place, home only to the rich who could afford to be here and the poor who couldn’t afford to do anything but be here. So many people have been forced out by exorbitant rents  and living prices and that is still continuing on a seemingly relentless scale.

Music venues, pubs, bars and clubs and affordable houses have been torn down and replaced with luxury flats most people living and working here could never afford to buy. A city with a chronic housing shortage is now twistedly home to tens of thousands of flats that remain empty, safety deposit boxes for the rich, commodities rather than homes for communities. And it doesn’t look like that will change anytime soon.

And yet this is a city that never stops evolving and its ability to transform itself over and over again is one of the defining characteristics of this city and its chameleonic nature is maybe its greatest feature. I hope that in time it will change again from what it is now and become something else, a place where people who work in it can actually live in it again and not have to ship themselves in from the outskirts. A place that has opportunities for all and not just for those who already have them. A place where artists and musicians can find places to live cheapily and develop their craft so they can create the next wave of  art and music that will define the next generation of this magnificent metropolis. London was a the city of culture, then it became the city of commerce and now it will become…I have no idea but I will be sticking around to watch and see what happens and I will be documenting it all along the way and bringing you more of my photographic observations along the way.

If you are reading this and are one of my subscribers I would like to thank you for staying on board and your continued support. I hope you will stick around for another 1000 posts..or thereabouts!

And a big special thanks to Bolis Pulpul who let me use his incredible track Teknow for the video above. You can check out his tunes here