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I should probably get the film advance lever on my Konica sorted out some time. But then I wouldn’t get random shots like this. These two were probably taken on the same day. Sun and gloom side by side. Maybe it is also an apt representation of different moods in the same day recently. Film: Kodak Ultramax 400

I spent 4 months of 2020 not taking public transport at all. No trains; although I saw them from my windows. And felt and heard them, lying in my bed.

It feels bizarre that a year ago, standing inches from a stranger, while another breathed into your neck was normal. It’s a thing that’s always blown my mind about London; how you can be in this crush of humans, and be so isolated simultaneously. A weird duality in our alien(ating) city.

The Tube / trains / public transport is generally is a good place to daydream (and I excel) or just be an observer (and I excel at this also).

One of my favourite Tube journeys is the Jubilee line section between Kilburn and Wembley Park. Looking left side out travelling North, I love seeing the blue, red and white reflection of the train snaking across the back windows of houses. Like an articulated toy snake, making its way through living rooms, kitchens and bedrooms uninvited.

Travelling in the opposite direction, one of my favourite views from the Jubilee line is the double “Man” tag on a red brick building just beyond Kilburn. It ends up reading “Man Man”, the name of one of my favourite bands when I still lived around there. The lyrics from Van Helsing Boombox always come into my head, passing that spot: “Only time will tell if I’ll allow / The scenery around to eat me alive”. I often thought the city would eat me alive when I first moved here. And somehow I’m still here.

In July I started to make the occasional journeys again; fatigued with the scenery around here. Worried that the sameness of months stuck in this particular corner of Zone 4 might eat me alive. (It might yet!) I still have to psych myself up for masked journeys, but it’s mostly been worthwhile. Escaping for half days into different corners of the city, and walking around streets I never have done with the camera. I probably spent more time seeing new things in London in the last few months, than in the last 5 years, because travelling out wasn’t an option. That’s not a bad thing.

I’m sure I’ve lost weeks of my life waiting for trains, and I loathe them for it, but I’ll hail them in 2020 as a means to escape. /

When the only place you can go is the park. Shot on Kodak Portra 400 with Konica C35.

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Another restless Saturday morning. Chores long done. I flee the flat; walk down C Ave heading to the park for the nth time. It’s cold, but not unbearably so. Just enough to make a jacket comfortable. The sound of approaching sirens, draws my attention away from the familiar frontgardenscapes of neighbours. At the junction ahead, two ambulances fly in opposite directions. Blinking blue lights like watery eyes in a sandstorm. Autumn detritus swirling around. On a corner outside the barber’s a man stands in the middle of the pavement staring at his phone, oblivious. I brush the curb to get around him, then walk along the busy high road. People coming out of the local station join the hands-in-pockets autumn foot traffic. At the next junction, the wait for the lights to change make me feel unbearably observed, standing at the nose of the nearest car in a row of three. Then three more and three more and so on. Like a drive-in to watch a pedestrian bum. [No one cares] Once across, I round the corner and watch my tartan jacket weave across the mirrors in the windows of the tile shop. I keep going and spot two guys on a roof, then spot their ladder; side step it. At the entrance to the park, a kid is taking some muscle-up gear out of his sports bag. White birds that look like small gulls, and probably are small gulls speckle the muddy green grass. The trees look barer than a few days ago. I decide to head towards the playground, thinking I might go on the swings if there are no kids around, but I’m slowed down by an unexpected sight. A new bike track has sprung up, as if overnight, like earthworms rising from the ground after the rain. I forget about the playground, and walk around the fencing that still surrounds it. It will never look this new again. So cool. I’m torn between heading to town on foot, or heading back home. Opt for home, because I don’t feel like dodging people on packed sidewalks. Really, I feel like I could keep walking and walking and walking. Catching that weird stride where you feel every joyous step. Rare moments of feeling energised, untouchable, free. The joy of a walk around the block.      

A few weeks ago, I was scanning in some old family photographs; something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, and noticed writing on the back of some of them. These were old “heirloom” photographs – pictures of my grandparents when they were young, of their siblings, and a few rare ones of their parents (my great grandparents) – proper old stuff.

One really stood out to me. A picture of my grandfather, with a note on the back saying “This is my husband to be. Please send the picture back to me again.”

The word ‘kiekie’ for ‘photograph’ made me smile, because of the association with that generation (not a word commonly used today), but also because of its onomatopoeic value, mimicking the sound of a camera shutter “kie-kie”.

I realised that my grandmother must have sent this picture by post to someone; maybe one of her sisters, and asked them to please return it to her.  It must have been her first and only picture of her fiancee at that point.

I often see piles of old photographs in markets; family pictures, baby pictures even, and wonder at what point they were abandoned to strangers. When the ones they were valuable to were no longer there? Would my sister’s kids see any value in pictures of people they never knew? I doubt it. I knew some of these people as a kid though, and to see their faces is to almost hear their voices; my grandmother shouting “bok” (a term of affection) across the yard to call my grandfather.

We share pictures within seconds across continents now, often of truly inane stuff (I’m guilty myself). It is a great thing to me, to still have photographs be treasured things with notes on the back saying: “Please send this back to me.”

My intention wasn’t really to use this blog to write long pieces, but hey, I felt inspired, so let’s go with it.

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After spending months in lock down*, stuck in my local neighbourhood, and having grown very weary of the sameness of it, I’ve finally starting doing small trips to Zone 1 again. I’m still keeping clear of crowds as much as possible (always generally avoided crowds anyway – hah), still minimising my time on the underground, and still keeping my distance. Basically being as safe as possible, whilst trying get out for a bit.

As you enter my Tube local station, a sign asks whether your journey is “essential”, and on my first nervous trip after a 4-month break from public transport, I really felt it was. If not physically essential, then a necessary vehicle to go and do something that I know will improve my mood / mental well being; the explorer needing to explore and see new things.

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On Sunday I went back to a location I visited last week. Not an area I know very well, but the diversity of people, the colours, and the architecture drew me back. In the pre-10am Sunday morning quiet, and with the sun dipping in and out from behind some patchy clouds, I ventured off the high street, and let myself wander between high rise apartment blocks. And right away I fell into my ‘looking at things’ trance. I don’t know how to explain this state of mind, but I become both visually hyper focused and partially  “blinded”. Strangers have to pull me back by the sleeve of my shirt from walking out in front of cars. I step off curbs, while looking at posters in windows 10 floors up, and stumble inelegantly. My own mother could walk by me, while I’m pondering a note on a lamp post, and I wouldn’t see her. No, really, friends have accused me of this. 🙂

//

I walk along a building, with its lawns at the same height as my shoulders.  When I look up, the seed head of a piece of wild grass, looks like a bouquet being handed from one figurine to another on the windowsill of a flat. It amuses me, so I look at it for a while, standing there smiling, before taking a picture. I notice a “Neighbourhood Watch” sticker in the frame; a curtain twitches, and I move along. A few doors down, a huge plant pot is decorated with a seafaring theme; ships and mermaids with “jelly bellies”, suggest there once were plenty of fish in the sea. In a documentary I watched some months ago about alarming fishing stats, the host bleakly said that one day our children will ask us where all the fish are, and we’ll have to say “we ate them all”. I can already see the headline in some shitty news paper: “THE MERMAIDS DID IT.”

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In a large window of an apartment opposite a cool, green square; three cool chairs. I wish I was in there, drinking tea in the sun. In the street below, a silver cover has been blown off a silver car; a half-disappointing reveal. Brown leaves are nestled around its wheels; silver, black and brown together. Fox colours. It occurs to me I haven’t seen a city fox in months. Maybe because I haven’t been out late, or coming home late this summer. That’s usually when we cross paths; post-gig and post-bin dive.

//

When the sun starts to come out, I head back to the high street, and building watching, turns to people watching. I loiter around a major crossing; a high rise in progress offers a great back drop for people crossing the road. A guy in light blue 70s shorts, and long blond hair approaches on a skateboard; perfect subject. I have two beats to lift my camera, but a cyclist stops right in front of me at the crossing, making the shot impossible. Rargh. I can’t hang around too long after that missed opportunity; it’s hard looking inconspicuous / not like a dummy just standing at a crossing. Motorists look at you like “are you going to cross or what?”. You could take your phone out to “look busy”, but someone can cycle or scooter by and grab it, and the point is to look at your surroundings, not your phone anyway. You don’t want to look like a lost tourist either, because that just makes you look vulnerable on a busy city street. After three changes of the lights, I cross, but not crossly. It feels good to be out and seeing things.

A block further, I get to another good spot I discovered the previous week. It’s equidistant from a pub and a bus stop, so I can pretend to be waiting for a bus. I’m just people watching really. In a building across the road, placards in the windows a few floors up spell out “NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE”. No one else seems to notice it.  After a good few minutes, the perfect moment / subject comes along; success. [After having the film developed later in the week, it turns out it was taken on a double exposed frame, so this shot I was waiting whole minutes for was a bust – it happens. It was so perfect in my mind though.]

I catch glimpses of my reflection in shop windows as I continue up the road; not as invisible as I’d like to be. And old lady in bright summer shorts gives my legs a good look; paler than hers. Sorry, I’ve been inside a while. Outside a 1 POUND DISCOUNT STORE, I spot a well dressed older gent I saw a few blocks back, and whilst keeping an eye on him, I miss a dip in the pavement and almost fall on my face. A boy leaning against a wall across the road, looks at me quizzically. I saw the same kid last week in the same spot. It’s weird how you remember some strangers. It didn’t click then, but it clicks now whilst writing this, that the sameness of my neighbourhood these last months to me to me, must be the sameness of his neighbourhood to him. He looked so bored when I saw him the previous week. I laughed when my parents visited me in England for the first time, and wanted to do simple things like walk to the supermarket with me, but I also totally get it. It was a novelty. It wasn’t their local shop.

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*If you are reading this blog years after it was posted, you may not get what “lock down” refers to. In 2020, the world was hit by a major pandemic, caused by a novel virus. To help prevent the spread of the virus, it was recommend that people stay at home as much as possible, and restrict travel beyond their local area. I was at home, did not leave my local neighbourhood, and did not use public transport from the start of March until early July. I wrote this at the start of August.

me, myself and I in lockdown, summer 2020.

In May this year I responded to @berlinonfilmmag’s haiku challenge, and spent quite an enjoyable few hours, trying to write some haikus to go with some analog shots I have taken in Berlin in the past. I decided to share some of these in this post.

I even made an attempt at writing German versions for each one, with the help of Google translate, but in order to meet the syllable requirements of haikus, these became a grammatical offence to my German friends, so I will spare the readers. Although……one of my more forgiving German friends said it is so bad it is almost sweet and endearing. Let me know what you think of these.

This first image was taken near a very popular tourist attraction in Berlin. In a different frame, you would see many people.

My Frame vs Yours:

I like this angle.

I have been to Berlin many times. Some good friends live there, and this image was taken, coming out of the station nearest where one of my friends live. The first time I arrived here, I felt so disoriented. Now I know this area pretty well.

“From Where Do I Go?” to “Feels Like Home”:

I felt so damn lost,
arriving here the first time.
I could live here now.

As a photographer, and a tourist, I like to do my own thing.

I’ll Go This Way:

than following crowds.

Near the Berlin wall memorial:

Nothing prevents you.

I think this is at / or a stop near Bülow Straße:

Stations Are Reflection Posts:

Easy to reflect,
on your life and other lives
while waiting for trains.

Go check out: Berlin on Film on instagram for more images from Berlin.