London Photos: London life in images by Kim Gilmour

I’m still around – business will resume normal opening hours shortly! Expect a few photos next week, but London may be conspicuously absent…

At Selfridges, girls rifle through the Brazilian jewellery, hoping to spend ten times the normal price for the beaded necklaces they’re stroking.

On Oxford Street in London, he presides over all that is Expensive, Superficial and fashion-related. Sent over by the mayor of Rio, one wonders about the significance of the real Christ the Redeemer statue compared with this consumer-driven 14 metre high replica. It’s certainly interesting. (One blogger notes, will we see a statue of Mary that cries soya milk at Starbucks?)

I have a few more Selfridges photographs. This image of overpriced plastic shoes was taken just a couple of hours ago. The entire department store has been kitted out with a Brazilian theme, with colourful clothes, shoes, decorations and food. A replica of Rio’s Christ Statue governs the building; king-of-bling style (I hate that word, bling). Selfridges sells Havaianas flip-flops for 17 pounds 50. In the favelas of Brazil they sell for TWO pounds, possibly even less. Depressing.

A 30th birthday invitation wedged between the switch and the wall.

From 24 June to 5 September, the Hayward Gallery in London will hold a new photographic exhibtion called Photography and the Death of the Portrait. It aims to explore whether “the notions of portraiture as an expression of the inner self through external appearance” still holds true in an age of genetic engineering and mass media. What this means when it comes to the photographs themselves I don’t know. The Hayward exhibition is accompanied by a major showing of the French photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue, the first of its kind in Britain. I presume the admission fee covers both shows.

Also – and we’re kicking ourselves because we can’t make it – the first major photography fair in London will be held, called, funnily enough, Photo London. The website has a list of exhibitors and is timed to coincide with the annual Christies and Sotheby’s auctions. Fifty galleries will have stands showing photography, film and video from artists including Man Ray, Bill Brandt, Julia Margaret Cameron, Cindy Sherman and Andreas Gursky. The fair runs from 20-23 May.

Insane. That’s what Ikea is, a bustling world of mummies and daddies with screaming children using the free pencils to add a moustache and eyelashes to an oversized photograph of Per Svenson Lekgreksoon, inventor of the stowaway plastic thing that costs 20p. We bought a sofa but we don’t have to assemble it because it was found in the Bargain Corner for 30 per cent off the advertised price. So I have yet to experience Ikea assembling. However, I did experience the cafe.