Quarterly Fundraiser: Seeking £1,000 to Support ‘The State of London’, My Unique Photo-Journalism Project
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,
Ten and a half years ago, at the comparatively youthful age of 48, I set out on my bike, armed with a small point-and-shoot Canon camera, on an ambitious mission to photograph the whole of London — or, more specifically, the 120 geographic postcodes that make up the 241 square miles of the London postal district.
3,839 days later, I’m now close to my 60th birthday, I’ve cycled tens of thousands of miles and taken tens of thousands of photos, as well as getting through two bikes and four cameras — with the most recent of these, a Canon PowerShot G7 X Mk. II, having transformed my photography since I first bought it nearly four years ago.
For the last five and a half years, my ambitious mission to record the changing face of the capital has manifested itself as ‘The State of London’, a unique photo-journalism project on Facebook (and Twitter), which involves me posting a photo from these journeys every two days, along with a detailed accompanying essay (I used to post a photo and essay every day until July this year, when I finally realised that the daily schedule had become too arduous).
Celebrating 2,000 Days of ‘The State of London’, My Unique Photo-Journalism Project
Please click on the ‘Donate’ button below to make a donation to support my reader-funded photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’, as it reaches its 2,000th day.
I’m delighted to report that today marks 2,000 days since I first began posting a photo a day taken on bike rides through the 241 square miles the capital’s 120 geographical postcodes — plus an accompanying essay — on my Facebook page ‘The State of London.’ I launched the Facebook page on the 5th anniversary of when I first set out consciously on my bike to capture my perceptions of London with a small point-and-shoot camera, on May 11, 2012 — and for anyone interested in that longer timescale, today actually marks 3,826 days since the project began, which has involved me getting through two bikes and four cameras (ending up with the wonderful Canon PowerShot G7 X Mk. II, which I’ve had for nearly the last four years, and going from looking at my 50th birthday approaching to reflecting on my imminent 60th.
I’m grateful to my 5,800 followers — and 1,350 followers on Twitter — plus the many more people who take an interest in the project without officially ‘following’ it.
There are, of course, many pages and websites out there that feature photos of London, but to the best of my knowledge there’s nothing like ‘The State of London’, which is very specifically a photo-journalism project. I endeavour to make the photos memorable in their own right, but they are rarely the kind of images you’d find wooing tourists, or emblazoned on a canvas print in a populist art shop — and, moreover, the photos are always accompanied by detailed essays providing a wealth of context, historical background and commentary.
Photos and Report: The Phenomenal Success of the Human Chain for WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange Around the UK Parliament
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.
Yesterday was a great day for activism, as at least 5,000 people turned up to form a Human Chain around Parliament for WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, who has been held in HMP Belmarsh for three and a half years, challenging his proposed extradition to the US to face espionage charges relating to his work publishing classified US government files leaked to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning.
As I arrived, just before the start time of 1pm, it was wonderful to see people lined up all along the front of the House of Parliament, and, as time passed and more people arrived, the line stretched south through Victoria Tower Gardens towards Lambeth Bridge, and across Westminster Bridge to the north, eventually completing the encirclement as people lined up by the Covid memorial wall on the south bank of the River Thames.
Although many organizations were involved — including numerous pro-Assange groups, and Amnesty International, who have an ongoing petition calling for the US government to drop the charges against Julian — this was primarily a protest by concerned individuals, not just from the UK, but also from across Europe, and from as far afield as Australia and New Zealand — who had all chosen to take part because of the huge threat to press freedom that Julian’s proposed extradition represents.
Quarterly Fundraiser: Seeking £1000 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,
Every three months, I ask you, if you can, to make a donation to support my ongoing photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’, an entirely reader-funded endeavour, in which, for the last five years and three months, I’ve been posting a photo a day, plus an accompanying essay, drawn from the photos I’ve been taking on daily bike rides throughout the capital for the last ten years.
If you can help out at all, please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal. Any amount will be gratefully received — whether it’s £5, £10, £20 or more!
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.
The donation page is set to dollars, because my PayPal page also covers donations to support my ongoing work to secure the closure of US prison at Guantánamo Bay, and many of those supporters are based in the US, but PayPal will convert any amount you wish to pay from any other currency — and you don’t have to have a PayPal account to make a donation.
Quarterly Fundraiser for ‘The State of London’; Hoping to Raise £1,000 to Support My Ongoing Photo-Journalism Project
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,
Every three months I ask you, if you can, to make a donation to support ‘The State of London’, my reader-funded photo-journalism project, for which I have no institutional backing whatsoever.
It’s now nine years and nine months since I first set out on my bike to record the changing face of London in daily photographs, and four years and nine months since I first began posting a photo a day — with an accompanying essay — on Facebook, and I’m thrilled that the project now has nearly 5,200 followers, and that so many of you clearly enjoying seeing the photos everyday, and reading the accompanying essays.
I hope, however, that you don’t mind me pointing out that, although it’s free to view and read, ‘The State of London’ is a significant daily undertaking on my part, via my bike journeys, the research I undertake for each photo chosen, sharing on social media, and responding to everyone’s comments, and even if I were to raise £1,000 it would only work out at slightly over £10 a day — way below the minimum wage!
Photos and Report: The Wet But Spirited Close Guantánamo Protest in London, Jan. 8, 2022, and an Online Gathering of Former Prisoners
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.
It would be hard to imagine more challenging weather conditions than the torrential rain that dogged a protest against the continued existence of Guantánamo in central London yesterday, marking the 20th anniversary of the opening of the prison in two days’ time.
39 campaigners in orange jumpsuits and hoods — representing the 39 men still held — marched in solemn procession from the Houses of Parliament, around Parliament Square and up Whitehall, stopping opposite 10 Downing Street, and ending up at Trafalgar Square. Each campaigner carried a laminated sheet featuring a photo of one of the prisoners, as well as their name and nationality.
The protest was organised by the Guantánamo Network, a coalition of groups that includes members of various Amnesty International groups, myself as the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign, two long-running London-based Guantánamo groups (the Guantánamo Justice Campaign and the London Guantánamo Campaign), and Freedom From Torture. Particular thanks are due to Sara Birch, the Guantánamo Network’s convenor, who is part of the Lewes Amnesty Group — and under whose energetic leadership Lewes has become something of an epicentre for Guantánamo activism.
Celebrating 1700 Days of my Photo-Journalism Project ‘The State of London’
If you can, please support ‘The State of London’, which is an entirely reader-supported project, with a donation. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.
Today marks 1,700 days since I first began posting a photo a day — plus accompanying essays — on ‘The State of London’ Facebook page; photos that were either taken on the day, or were drawn from the photos I’d started taking on bike rides throughout London’s 120 postcodes five years earlier. For anyone keeping count, that means that it’s now 3,526 days since I first set out on my bike to capture the changing face of London.
In the last 1,700 days, my ability to take photos has, I think, improved in general (largely because of the upgrade to my current camera, a Canon PowerShot G7 X Mk. II, in February 2019), and I have also, increasingly, devoted much more time to the essays that accompany each photo. I’m gratified to see that the project has steadily been gaining support, so that I recently welcomed my 5,000th follower.
As I have delved deeper into London’s history on my journeys, and in the research for the photos, I have come to recognize how resilient London is as a city, despite having lost so much in the Great Fire of London in 1666, and in the German bombing raids in World War II. Nevertheless, as I realized as soon as I began the project in May 2012, it has also recently been invaded, not by fire, or by a wartime enemy, but by predatory transnational capital, building huge new towers of offices in the City of London, and high-rise residential towers in Canary Wharf and in numerous former industrial sites across the capital (the Vauxhall Nine Elms Battersea Opportunity Area, for example), all eagerly facilitated by conniving politicians and generally supine architects.
Quarterly Fundraiser for My Photo-Journalism Project ‘The State of London’: Can You Help Me Raise £1,000?
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,
It’s now over four and a half years since I first began to post photos — and accompanying essays — on Facebook, as ‘The State of London’, from the archive of photos that I’d been building up since I first began cycling with a camera and a curious eye throughout London’s 120 postcodes five years before, in May 2012.
This has, from the beginning, been a labour of love. No one asked me to do it, and no one was paying me to do it either, but as time has gone on and the project has become more popular (with nearly 5,000 followers now on Facebook), I have also devoted more and more time to it — particularly through the research I undertake into the subjects of my photos, and the essays I write to accompany my daily posts, which I know many of you appreciate.
As a result, earlier this year I began posting quarterly fundraisers asking you to make a donation, if you can, to support ‘The State of London.’ If you can help out, please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal. Any amount will be gratefully received — whether it’s £5, £10, £20 or more!
Celebrating 1,600 Days 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’.
Sunday marked 1,600 days since I first began posting a daily photo of London — with an accompanying essay — on my Facebook page ‘The State of London’, drawn from the daily bike rides I’d been making for the previous five years through the 120 postcodes of the London Postal District (those beginning with WC, EC, E N, NW, SE, SW and W), which covers 241 square miles.
I’m immensely grateful to the nearly 4,800 followers ‘The State of London’ has gathered on Facebook over the last four years, and the nearly 1,100 on Twitter, and if you can make a donation to support the project, it will be very gratefully received, as I have no institutional backing, and am reliant on you, my readers, to enable me to carry on cycling and taking photos, and researching and writing the essays that accompany every photo.
Please click on the ‘Donate’ button above if you can make a donation via PayPal. The page is set to dollars, because I also use it to support my work on ongoing work campaigning to get the prison at Guantánamo Bay closed, which I began 15 years ago, but for donations in pounds, all you really need to know is the conversion rate, which is currently about 3:4, so a donation of £15, for example, would be $20.
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.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
