In the latest set of photos uploaded to my recently established Flickr account, I’ve posted photos that I took on the American Day of Independence, July 4, 2012, when I spoke at a screening of “Extradition,” a film about Talha Ahsan and Babar Ahmad, two British citizens facing extradition to the US on the basis of the grossly unfair and unjust US-UK Extradition Treaty. The screening was at no.w.here, a not-for-profit artist-run organization based in Tower Hamlets, which “combines film production alongside critical dialogue about contemporary image making,” and it was an excellent evening, even though the subject matter, and the urgency of the men’s plight, cast a sense of anguish over the entire event.

As part of my new and ongoing project to cycle everywhere in London, and to photograph my journeys, capturing aspects of the built environment, of nature, and of money and power, set against decay, poverty and the odd, untouched backwater (see here, here and here for the previous sets of my London journeys), I was delighted to travel to the east end of Bethnal Green Road, near Cambridge Heath Road, which, it slightly shames me to admit, I had never visited before, although I am familiar with the western end of the road — at the northern end of Brick Lane.

What I found was a vibrant, ethnically mixed neighbourhood, with independent businesses in tall terraced Victorian buildings, although I soon learned, from immediately striking up a conversation with Brad Butler, one of the founders of no.w.here (along with Karen Mirza) that the forces of gentrification have designs on the street, as they do on so much of London — right here and right now — despite the recession that is afflicting all but the rich and the super-rich. As ever, it alarms me profoundly that this appears to be, essentially, the first engineered recession in history, as the rich are excluded from the effects of the government-engineered austerity that otherwise stalks the land, driving the working poor, the young, the old, the ill, the unemployed and the disabled into unprecedented poverty, while protecting those with money from any kind of suffering, even though those in the City who drove the artificial and illegal wealth creation that caused the financial crash in 2008, and those who made money out of it, are the ones who should paying the most. Read the rest of this entry »

Regular readers will know that, after the rainiest spring in living memory, I found myself unable to stay in the house when the sun started shining again. My mission to take advantage of the good weather, and to take exercise and stretch my eyes and my mind beyond what I was beginning to regard as the confines of my computer, has resulted, over the last few months, in numerous journeys around London by bike. With my camera close at hand, the intention of these journeys has generally had less to do with getting from A to B than with wandering, getting lost and exploring.

I recently set up a Flickr account, initially posting photos of my trip to the US in January to campaign for the closure of Guantánamo, and of other protests in the UK, but this week I also began posting photos from my London journeys, beginning with a set of photos of my initial cycle journey around Deptford and Greenwich, and continuing here. Others will follow soon.

I am, I think, fulfilling a long dormant need to be in motion physically rather than constantly undertaking the mental journeys of the last five years of my life as a full-time freelance investigative journalist, and I am also at the beginning of a long project to travel — and photograph — the whole of London by bike. I have discovered that, as well as looking for spectacular views of the city that has been my home for 27 years, including many that I have never seen before, I am also in search of forgotten corners, and images of decay, often set against those of what is often termed “regeneration,” as well as the explosions of dissent and nonconformity and colour that are to be found in London’s street art. Read the rest of this entry »