Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london.

Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london.

Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london.

If there was a motto to bind these colourful characters together this week it is “be yourself, everyone else is taken”. It is a celebration of the glorious individuality of London’s inhabitants. This is because we live in the capital city of no-one gives a shit. Where what you want, be who you feel like, just stay out of my way. This indifference creates a culture where freedom of expression can thrive. If you live in a small town and you look different in any way people stare, sometimes  worse. In a city this populated and diverse you live in a  world where no-one will ever notice you. For most people here, that’s a good thing. Anonymity rules.

P.S As I uploaded this picture I noticed the hand of the guy walking past, it totally freaked me out as it looks very much like he has a skull growing out of it(?!) Now, I’m all for personal style but that’s messed up. I’m not seeing things, right? That is a skull? Bulging underneath the skin? Ok, I admit it. I’m spooked.  How do you even DO that? If that is the case he definitely wins the most unusual look hands down (no pun intended) which is impressive as I wasn’t even taking a photograph of him but I really think he should probably be run out of town and burnt at the stake just to be on the safe side…where’s an angry mob when you need one? BURN HIM! BURN HIM! BURN HIM!

Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

We share our world with two dimensional beings, looming large above us, always lurking in the corner of our eye. They want us to look at them but they make us feel inadequate. They are shiny and blemish free, we are not. They do not get tired or irritated. They are passive and perfect. Why won’t they leave us alone? What do they want from us? If we don’t notice them, they will they go away but this will not happen. Their masters know this. They put them there to bewitch us. To entice us into their worlds. We idolize them. We yearn to be them. That is why they are there. To give us something to strive towards, something to aspire to….and failing that, cos that’s like really hard and stuff…to make us go and buy whatever crap they are promoting in the hope it might make us feel better. It won’t. Well, maybe for a minute or two…

Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

and so endeth a week of scary old people in some vague tribute to halloween and the day of the dead  – in the 80s there were 2000 people over age of 100 living in the U.K, now there are over 16,000. The current obsession with zombies might be that the living dead are already walking among us. As longevity continues to increase our world might one day be overrun (well, overshuffled) by OAPs. A scary thought if ever there was one. My Grandma always said “there’s no good getting old” and from what I can see she is right. Old age is life, just worse. Health advances are keeping us alive longer and longer as our remit for living seems focussed purely on quantity rather than quality but for what purpose? What’s good at that end?

It’s not that I’m anti-old, it just doesn’t look like a barrel of laughs. And yet, in a society that is obsessed with eradicating all signs of ageing I actually find myself increasingly more drawn to photographing those who bear the battle scars of life. These unironed faces at least have character and tell a story. They teach us that living is hard and just to survive it is a triumph. And they show that even as the body deteriorates the human spirit never does. What did anyone ever learn from a face full of botox?