London Photos: London life in images by Kim Gilmour

A little bit of Turbine Hall overload?

After Brighton last week we went back to the Tate Modern (it closes at 10pm on Fridays and Saturdays, y’know!) and took a few more images. Got them developed at good old Snappy Snaps. I have about 10 others of the Turbine Hall, including some of people lying on the ground – all very surreal indeed! (Side note: Did anyone see the G2 supplement in The Guardian of volunteers all forming a “G2″ shape on the ground?) I used 800 speed film for this and used a negative scanner initially but the contrasty colours really messed the scan up, so I used the tried and tested flatbed to scan the print in! Click on it for a larger version.

Got the Thameslink from London to Brighton last Saturday afternoon; it cost 15 pounds return.

The one above is of one of the amusement machines on the pier. You put a coin into the slot, and you hope that it falls in such a way that the moving tray below will push it over the edge, triggering some of the coins below the tray to fall through the collection box underneath. There are also rubbish prizes stacked on top of the coins, like a Bagpuss brooch.

In my hometown of Sydney, Brighton beach means Brighton-Le-Sands, a pseudo Anglo-Franco name (it’s next to a place called Sans Souci!), a suburb of Sydney I grew up in. Full of drag racing down The Grande Parade, souvlaki, palm trees and, of course, Coles Ramsgate. Confused? Good. So, this is Brighton the real deal, where Lydia and Mr Wickham in Pride and Prejudice went for a dirrty weekend, where my friend N. got exasperated, where my colleague Tim commutes from every day, where people have come for hundreds of years for magic cures to their ills.

The famous Empire movie theatre in Leicester Square. That’s pronounced “Lester”, not “Lye Sesster” as I’ve overheard many an American say.

It is an SX-70 Polaroid Manipulation. I shot the Polaroid while walking to work this morning, then sat down for 10minutes with a wooden skewer smushing the emulsion around. Voila.

You can see all our Polaroid Manipulations here.

A bit of craziness here. This is a Polaroid photograph of the London tube map. While the emulsion was still soft, I smushed it around and around and around like chewing gum until I was left with this. It is complete nonsense, but maybe closer to the geographical truth than the official map.

More about the Tube Map from bloggers here, here and here.

This rather plain looking photo was taken early this year one morning in Regent’s Park, on my way to Primrose Hill, but I don’t mind it! I seem to have put a lot of London snow photos in here! This is because I was brought up in Sydney, where it never snows at all. There are some great thunderstorms there, though!
Too bad snow is white – we won’t be able to use the Polaroid manipulation to smush it around!!

Another image of the Weather Project installation at the Tate Modern. We went again on Saturday night, but somehow the effect wasn’t the same – not sure why, exactly, but perhaps it had something to do with the lack of daylight coming into the building? There were also a lot more people there from contortionists to students protesting against fees to really frivolous people yelling, “Oh, so good to see you, I like your top!”

It’s probably also worth putting a few somewhat failed attempts at SX-70 Polaroid Manipulation in this gallery. Not everything can turn out like Van Gogh! Here’s what happens when the manipulation’s initial exposure meant the photo came out way too dark, coupled with messing around with the emulsion when it was too wet (like about two minutes after I took it). Last of all, the actual subject matter wasn’t too hot, either. This is not a particularly arresting scene. It is not a total failure though so I thought I’d put it up here anyway. Check out the other more successful ones we’ve done

Another SX-70 Polaroid Manipulation, this time of the new Jubilee Bridge across the Thames in London. Taken on a cold and windy October 24th and manipulated using a wooden skewer while on the top deck of a London Bus!

I have noticed that certain colours are more suited to manipulation, especially blue and red. This probably has something to do with the emulsion layers and primary colours.

You may be wondering what one of these maniupluated Polaroids looks like close up. Well, here’s one I did of one of the Lions at Trafalgar Square, London (black doesn’t smudge well!) and underneath is a close-up example of what it looks like!

We went past Blaine in his stupid box (see Polaroid Manipulations for our attempts with the Tower Bridge) yesterday and encountered about a billion people all looking up as soon as he stood up to take a pee… there were even street vendors! Behold the glorious light shing from above as Blaine watches over this procession of zoo visitors! (That’s sarcasm, folks!) We didn’t stop to loiter, we kept going. That was also the first time I’d seen the Mayor’s building in real life, too – might take some more pics of that later.