Quarterly Fundraiser: Seeking $2500 (£2000) for My Guantánamo Work and My London Photo-Journalism
Please click on the ‘Donate’ button below to make a donation towards the $2,500 (£2,000) I’m trying to raise to support my work on Guantánamo, and/or for my London photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’.
Dear friends and supporters,
Every three months I ask you, if you can, to support my ongoing work researching and writing about the prison at Guantánamo Bay, and campaigning to get it closed down once and for all. I’ve now been doing this for 15 and a half years, and, as a reader-funded journalist, commentator and activist, I rely on your support to keep going.
If you can make a donation to support my ongoing efforts to close Guantánamo, and/or my photo-journalism, please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal. Any amount will be gratefully received — whether it’s $500, $100, $25 or even $10 — or the equivalent in any other currency.
You can also make a recurring payment on a monthly basis by ticking the box marked, “Make this a monthly donation,” and filling in the amount you wish to donate every month. If you are able to do so, a regular, monthly donation would be very much appreciated.
Quarterly Fundraiser for My Photo-Journalism Project ‘The State of London’
Please click on the ‘Donate’ button below to make a donation to support my photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’.
Nine years ago, in the spring of 2012, I set out on my bike, with a small point-and-shoot Canon camera, on a mission to take photos in all 120 postcodes of the London postal district, an area of 241 square miles featuring the City and the West End (EC and WC), and the compass points that radiate out from them (E, SE, SW, W, NW and N).
I embarked on the project after five largely sedentary years spent researching and writing about the prison at Guantánamo Bay, and an illness in 2011, in part because I wanted to get fit, but, in particular, because I wanted to get to know better the city that has been my home since I left university in 1985, and to record its multi-layered history and the significant changes that it was undergoing as it played host to the 2012 Olympic Games, and, more generally, as development money poured in to remake huge swathes of the capital for the 21st century, via an array of “regeneration” projects that largely seem to involve sidelining the genuine needs of Londoners in pursuit of profits for investors, both foreign and domestic.
Five years in, I began posting a daily photo on Facebook from the archive I’d built up since 2012, accompanying the photos with essays intended to establish it as a photo-journalistic appraisal of the capital in all of its complexity, and I hope that, as the project has gone on, it has also improved, as I embraced better technology (upgrading to a Canon PowerShot G7X Mk. II in February 2019), became a better photographer, and increasingly devoted more time to the essays that give the photos what I regard as a necessary context.
The Hell That is Boris Johnson’s Broken, Brexit-Deluded, Covid-Ravaged England
Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist, commentator and activist. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.
For the last two months, my physical world has shrunk immensely. For nine years I cycled almost every day, capturing the changing face of London on bike rides that have taken me to the furthest postcodes of Europe’s largest city, and that, since the first Covid lockdown in March 2020, involved me cycling most days into central London — the City and the West End — to capture what began as apocalyptic emptiness, to which, by degrees, human activity eventually returned, but on nothing like the scale that it was before Covid hit. I post a photo a day from those bike rides — with accompanying essays — on my Facebook page ‘The State of London’, and also on Twitter.
Two months ago, however, I sprained my leg quite badly — crossing an unexpected line when what I thought was healthy activity turned out to be something that, instead, signified that my body’s resilience was finite, and that I was wearing it out.
Since then, I’ve barely left my immediate neighbourhood. For most of the last two months, I felt fortunate if I was able to hobble to the bottom of the street I live in in Brockley, in south east London. The worst of it is now over, as the muscle I sprained has finally healed, but in the process of compensating my knee itself is now bruised and painful, and although I can walk further — up to and and around my local park, Hilly Fields, and around the streets nearest to me, I haven’t been able to venture further afield, except on a few occasions when my wife has driven me somewhere.
Fundraiser Marking the 9th Anniversary of My Photo-Journalism Project ‘The State of London’
Please click on the ‘Donate’ button below to make a donation to support my photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’.
Dear friends and supporters of ‘The State of London’,
Today marks the ninth anniversary of when I first set out consciously on my bike, armed with a small Canon compact camera, to take photos on a daily basis of the changing face of London throughout the 241 square miles of the capital’s 120 postcodes, and the fourth anniversary of when I began posting a photo a day on ‘The State of London’ Facebook page, where I also post an essay to accompany each photo. I also post the daily photos on Twitter.
I’ve now posted 1,431 photos on Facebook, where I now have nearly 4,500 followers, as well as the many other people who keep up with the project on my personal Facebook page, and, as the project has evolved, so too have my abilities as a photographer, especially over the last two years and three months since I upgraded to my current camera, the wonderful Canon PowerShot G7X Mk. II.
Sadly, I’m currently unable to celebrate this particular milestone on my bike, as I have strained a muscle in my right leg and am encouraging myself to remain largely immobile until it has healed, but in general I’ve been out and about most days over the last nine years, and since I began posting daily photos on Facebook, the demands of the project mean that, in addition to the time spent cycling, I also spend one or two hours researching the photo of the day and writing the text to accompany it, posting the photos and responding to comments.
Celebrating 1,400 Days of My Photo-Journalism Project, ‘The State of London’
Please feel free to support ‘The State of London’, for which I have no financial backing except via your donations. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.
Today marks 1,400 days since I first began posting a photo a day — and accompanying essays — on my Facebook page ‘The State of London’, and I’m delighted that it has continued to grow in popularity, so that I now have over 4,300 followers, plus many more who follow the daily posts on my own Facebook page.
It now seems like another age since I first set out on my bike to chronicle the changing face of London in photos, in May 2012, exactly five years before I started posting a photo a day on Facebook. As I drew on the archive I’d built up for my daily posts — choosing a photo from each successive day, but from any of the years since the project started — the London of the second decade of the 21st century was a recognisable beast; sometimes charming, sometimes infuriating, a place where the gulf between the rich and the poor continued to grow at an alarming pace, and a place that has been invaded and occupied by predatory developers, building skyscraper office blocks that were not needed, and dense forests of residential tower blocks that were unaffordable for most hard-working Londoners, while selling off existing estates of social housing to be knocked down for further profits.
In terms of my photography and my research, the project has seen huge developments. After using simple point-and-shoot cameras at the beginning, I invested in a superior example, the Canon PowerShot G7X Mk II, two years ago, which transformed my photography, and I also began devoting more and more time to the text accompanying the photos, which, in the early days, had often been quite cursory.
Please Make A Donation to Support My Photo-Journalism Project ‘The State of London’
Please click on the ‘Donate’ button below to make a donation to support my photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’.
Dear friends and supporters of ‘The State of London’,
It’s nearly nine years since I first set off on my bike to record London in photos on daily trips through the 241 square miles of the capital’s 120 postcodes — and nearly four years since I began posting a photo a day on Facebook, where I also post an accompanying essay to accompany each photo, and on Twitter.
At the time of writing, I’ve posted 1,350 photos on Facebook, and I’m delighted to note that the Facebook page currently has 4,250 followers, as well as the many other people who keep up with the project on my personal Facebook page.
I’m grateful for all the interest — and the wonderful supportive comments that I receive on a gratifyingly regular basis — but today I’d like to ask you, if you are able, to make a donation to support ‘The State of London’, as I have no financial backing whatsoever, and I’m relying on you to keep me going.
Radio: I Discuss London’s Housing Crisis and Covid’s Impact on Business Rents with Andy Bungay, Plus Three Four Fathers Songs
Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist, commentator and activist. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.
Recently I spoke to Andy Bungay of Riverside Radio, a community radio station in Wandsworth, for his show ‘The Chiminea’, which was broadcast on Boxing Day, and is available here on Mixcloud.
Andy and I have been speaking for several years, and it’s always great to talk to him. Our 50-minute segment of the two and a half hour show began just under 21 minutes in, when Andy played ‘Fighting Injustice’, the first of three songs by my band The Four Fathers, which has long been a live favourite, and whose chorus is something of a mantra of mine — “If you ain’t fighting injustice / You’re living on the dark side.”
We then began our discussion by taking about my photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’, which I began in 2012, and which involves me cycling and taking photos on a daily basis throughout London’s 120 postcodes, and, since 2017, posting a photo a day, with an accompanying story, on Facebook.
Radio: I Discuss Hopes for Guantánamo’s Closure Under Joe Biden, and Julian Assange’s Extradition, with Chris Cook on Gorilla Radio
Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.
Chris Cook, in Victoria, British Columbia, hosts a great weekly progressive radio show, Gorilla Radio, and I’m delighted to have been talking to him on a regular basis — mostly about Guantánamo — for many years now.
I spoke to Chris recently for an hour, and you can find the show on his website here, and also here as an MP3. A shorter version of the interview was included in the show that was broadcast on December 17, featuring journalist and author John Helmer in the first half (and the MP3 of that show is here).
I began by providing a brief history of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, which will mark the shameful 19th anniversary of its opening in just three weeks’ time, and I stressed how, under Donald Trump, the prison has essentially been sealed shut for the last four years. Bearing that in mind, there is now hope that, at the very least, some of the remaining 40 prisoners will be freed, and there will progress towards the prison’s closure.
Celebrating 1,300 Days of My Photo-Journalism Project ‘The State of London’
Please support my work on ‘The State of London’, a labour of love that has no funding except from you. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.
Sunday marked 1,300 days — over three and a half years — since I first began posting a photo a day (plus an accompanying essay) on my Facebook page ‘The State of London.’
The Facebook project began on May 11, 2017, the fifth anniversary of the day I first consciously began cycling around the 120 postcodes of the London Postal District (the postcodes beginning E, EC, N, NW, SE, SW, W and WC), intending to capture, in photos, the changing face of the city, and its different manifestations based on the weather and the seasons.
My thanks to everyone taking an interest in the project, which has just reached 3,800 followers — plus many more who follow the photos on my own Facebook page, and also those who follow ‘The State of London’ on Twitter.
Quarterly Fundraiser: Seeking $2500 (£2000) for my Guantánamo Work and Photo-Journalism Project ‘The State of London’
Please click on the ‘Donate’ button below to make a donation towards the $2,500 (£2,000) I’m trying to raise to support my work on Guantánamo over the next three months, and/or for my London photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’.
Dear friends and supporters,
Every three months I ask you, if you can, to support my ongoing work as a reader-funded journalist, activist and photo-journalist. It’s now 15 years since I first began researching the prison at Guantánamo Bay, writing about it and campaigning relentlessly to get it closed, and eight years since I began a photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’, consisting of photos and accompanying essays taken on daily bike rides through London’s 120 postcodes.
On Guantánamo, it was, I recall, September 2005 when I became appalled that the administration of George W. Bush had refused to even let the world know the identities of the men held there, and set about trying to find out who was held there.
That quest, as some of you will know, led to me being the only person to review all the documents released through freedom of information legislation in the spring of 2006, when the Pentagon was finally obliged to release the identities of the prisoners, and 8,000 pages of supporting documents — unclassified summaries of what the US alleged to be evidence against them, and transcripts of the lawless tribunals the US had held to, for the most, perfunctorily assess and confirm that they were correctly held as “enemy combatants” who could be imprisoned without charge or trial forever.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
