Roblog

I went to see the crowds at the coronation this weekend, to see if it felt like history in the making. The mood was hard to gauge; the rain really put a dampener on things. But the crowd felt so much less reverential than when the Queen died, so much less moved, so much less interested. If someone travelled back in time and told me that this was in fact the last ever British coronation, I wouldn’t be enormously surprised. #

Another bit of self-promotion, if you’ll indulge me. As part of the general mood that’s in the air at the moment, focused on moving away from the internet’s various large walled gardens, I’ve decided that having my photos exist only on Instagram isn’t really much fun. And so I’ve started a little photo blog, focused on my home city of London.

I’m going to use to it for photo essays about the city, its people, and how it changes over time. There are a few up there already, on London in Lockdown, the Queen’s funeral, the recent Iranian protests, and the final years of Smithfield Market. #

Geoff Dyer, writing in Aperture, summarises the iconoclasm and revolution of photography in the 1970, an era I’ve always found fascinating.

“Photographers were busy taking photographs, making work, but interesting photographs are always being taken, great work is always being made, whatever the decade. In the ’70s, though, photography was being examined and defined in a way that harked back to Alfred Stieglitz’s pioneering inquiries into… ‘idea photography’.”

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Surreally beautiful double-exposure photographs from the Finnish photographer Christoffer Relander. #