In Love London design writer and photographer, Barbara Chandler’s, celebrates London in 180 colour and black and white images of London’s cultural, economic and historic diversity. 180 colour and black and often matched with 100 quotes about the city. Taken over 25 years, these images give an impression of the cultural, economic, social and architectural diversity of life in London. She has an obvious fondness for the city and humorously pairs images together on the page or with quotes but is not afraid to address the realities of London life.
Barbara’s eye often picks out those elements of architecture, people and daily life which contradict each other: the passionate speaker on his stepladder at Speakers’ Corner with sunbathers and picnickers relaxing behind him; the two young girls hanging out of the open window of a pink stretch limo as a protest march passes them; the triumphalism of the Wellington Arch with the poignancy of a statue of a First World War soldier in the foreground.
There is a feeling in many of Barbara’s images that life goes on, no matter what: the line of red poppy wreaths on a war memorial which guide your eye to a line of red buses on the road behind; the old soldier collecting for disabled servicemen as a bus speeds past; Liberty’s window tribute to the late Alexander McQueen seemingly superimposed with the reflections of shoppers and cars on the busy street outside.
She has paired images to give us uncomfortable juxtapositions: a fur-clad white woman eating a macaroon in Burlington Arcade opposite a photo of an African-Caribbean woman looking at a display in a Hackney market, while in the foreground dead chickens hang above a hand-painted signboard advertising a salon’s services; the celebration of Boudicca’s fight against the Romans in the statue which stands at the corner of Westminster Bridge next to an old soldier collecting for disabled ex-servicemen with his makeshift sign and a long row of medals pinned to his chest. She has also paired images to give us humorous juxtapositions: a poster declares “All politcians are lying scum” while opposite a police officer sits in his hut guarding the Houses of Parliament; the pig sty at Hackney City Farm across from a pig painted on the front of a shop; a bulldog lies on the street wrapped in a coat and jumper and opposite a photo of street art shows a dog cocking his leg but below that we return to the uncomfortable with the photo of a homeless man with his dog.
The book takes us on a diverse journey through London. From the photo of the policeman in his hut outside parliament, we turn the page to discover crowds watching a street musician, then turn the page again to a building housing tattoo parlour, decorated with huge roses, playing cards and dice in Camden and look across the page to the exuberance of window boxes and hanging baskets on the balcony of a flat in Islington.
But in that diversity Barbara also shows us the similarities: one may be a tattoo parlour and the other a home but they are both adorned with flowers; Christian worshippers on Portabello Road in 1995 may seem very different from commuters crossing Tower Bridge in 2009 but all have to contend with the rain and commuters sitting on the tube in 1993 barely differ from those taken 17 years later – no-one is talking to each other.
Barbara has taken some of London’s most familiar landmarks, those that Londoners walk past without even noticing any more, that only tourists usually photograph, and focussing on a detail has rendered them in a way that we could be discovering them for the first time. She shows us the the rear of the Ritz Hotel sign, silhouetted against the sky, as if we were walking out of the hotel and Nelson standing atop his column, again silhouetted against a blue sky with nothing but a plane for company.
My favourite of Barbara’s photos are those of the intimate and personal moments in a busy city: a man pauses at the top of the steps down to Tottenham Court Road station; the woman engrossed in a book, sitting beside the water at Strand-on-the-Green; a girl pushes a boy on a swing; a girl looks out at the view over the rooftops from behind the safety mesh on top of The Monument; a young woman in flip-flops and a mini-dress negotiates the steps down into Aldgate tube station.
In her introduction Barbara reminds us that the writers down the ages who have praised London have also condemned and lashed out at it. And in Love London, she is continuing that great tradition.
