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Colour in London |
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This week's pictures come from a walk around Central London on a sunny afternoon this November. Their subject is colour in London. You might not think of London as a colourful city, but it really is, especially on the bright sunny days we seem to be getting more of nowadays. The classic London colour, of course, is the red of buses and phone and letterboxes, but the spectrum is much wider than that. There is a riot of colour in advertising and shop displays, but what is perhaps most characteristic is the way colour in London stands out against the city's still essentially monochrome buildings. The urban fabric is itself becoming more colourful and, with global warming, we can expect London to look more and more bright and vivid in the future. Unless it's all sunk, of course. |
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About this site |
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The picture library has 48000 keyworded images online and you can access them all from the search page. New or updated subjects include Central London, Brighton's North Laine, graffiti, windows, wigs, leaves and old aircraft. To explore the site, go to the information and search guide, plus the indexes of subjects, events & places and Brighton. Have a look at the portfolio and the pictures of the week series. The latter publishes ten images about a particular topic and now totals more than 2300 pictures. Then there is the picture sets page which covers specific events and places. Almost all the library's pictures are available for personal or commercial reproduction. Digital files can be delivered by email or CD and prices start from as little as £8. The pages on prices and terms & conditions give further information. Commissioned new photography is also available by arrangement. |
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Last week's pictures featured graffiti in Brighton |
| Last week's picture set looked at graffiti in Brighton's North Laine, the same charismatic district whose windows had been the previous week's subject. Graffiti is all over urban Britain (Manchester, Bristol and London particularly) but this small part of Brighton has street art and writing as varied and lively as anywhere. A recent clean-up by the local council has painted over many of the area's graffiti walls and there is no denying that the worst scribbling and tagging is an eyesore. But imaginative graffiti, especially if it has humour, is an attractive feature of modern street life and it would be a shame if it were completely wiped away from the North Laine. Putting art and words on walls is also a freedom for people who have something to say but nowhere else to say it. Interestingly, the first picture in this set (all photographed in October 2006) shows a piece by the celebrated Banksy that's been painted over not by the council but by another street artist. Most likely this was prompted by the recent news that Banksy is now selling his work in fashionable art galleries for huge amounts of money. It looks like his bankability could cost him his credibility. |
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Recent pictures of the week |
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The set a fortnight ago featured some windows of the North Laine, the charming and fashionable district in the middle of Brighton. The North Laine's charm is the way that homes, shops, cafes and pubs are all mixed together in a network of 19th century streets. The residents and the traders of the area have a strong tradition of individuality, though its popularity means it is now hard for anyone but the rich to either live or open a business there. But the terraced houses are a visual delight and there is great variety and character crammed into a very small area. The pictures in this set are all of ground floor windows in North Laine houses. They include three that show part of a marvellous exhibition in Tidy Street. Residents there each chose a family photo important to them and it was blown up to fill their front window. The North Laine is not yet ruined while it still comes up with ideas like that. No offence to the folically challenged, but there's something inherently funny about wigs, the subject of the picture feature three weeks ago. You see them in the windows of joke shops and you wear them to parties. Toddlers, whenever they put them on their heads, invariably burst out laughing. With almost equal certainty, a wig is always obviously a wig. It's a very lucky man who succeeds in making it look as if it really is his hair, and not something that's landed on his head from outer space. Or in the case of judges, something from a very, very long time ago. The pictures in this set were taken in Brighton, London and Bournemouth. Four weeks ago the subject was leaves. Their autumn beauty is classic, but they can make a good subject at any time of the year. Changing in shape and colour almost every month, leaves have amazing variety. Nowadays, there is at least as wide a choice of them to see in the city as in the countryside. Urban gardens and our great heritage of Victorian parks have given us a fantastic range of trees and plants, whereas industrialised agriculture has reduced the variety growing in rural areas. The pictures in this set were taken in Brighton, London and Sussex. |
