Last Stop

Last Stop was photographed across the city of London through the windows of its double decker buses. Although London has always been a dynamic city with a changing demographic, I was surprised by the speed of change in the last decade. London has experienced its largest foreign migration in history, the economy had boomed but the wealth gap has increased. Somehow, all this diversity has found a way to co-exist. This migration was one of the first motivating factors for making this project. The idea of London as the promised land, the last stop. But this migration in the city applies to us all. It is this constant movement and sharing of space that fascinates me. As a young teenager, during the school holidays my friends and I, would wander around the city, jumping on and off random buses. We would go to places we had no reason to visit and used London like a massive playground. In many ways, what I am doing now is not too dissimilar, taking random buses and getting lost across the city. The double decker buses allowed me too frame the city, to give it sense. The lower level is very close to street photography, I’m almost touching the people on the street. The upper deck allows me the distance to capture the layers of the urban landscape. Another observation, is how people use public space in a big city, that sense of invisibility. By sitting behind the window, I also became invisible, a little bit like the thousands of CCTV cameras that track our movements. As a photographer I wanted the challenge of not having full control, taking whatever free seat there was next to the window, only being able to photograph, what was within reach of my static position and in front of me. Just a fleeting glance. Nonetheless, my photography is not detached. I try to capture and understand the emotional content of London’s everyday movements, rhythms and rituals. I am part of this, it is also my movement, my community, my home. The book "Last Stop" is a double-sided concertina and is integral to the concept of the whole work. The essence of the project is that you might take the same route everyday but what you see, the ebb and flow on the street takes on a random nature. To capture this flow, the concertina allows the feel of a bus journey but more importantly it gives the viewer the opportunity to create their own journeys by spreading the book out and combining different images together, allowing for multiple readings.