London Photos: London life in images by Kim Gilmour

Just past the queue to the International Tattoo Convention but before Beigel Bake. Brick Lane, this afternoon.

Walking in Mayfair.

Was in hospital earlier this week for a knee arthroscopy. The only thing on TV was Trisha. I took this one with my mobile.

The one was taken at Selfridges – a weird clothes rack!

I always wondered what was inside the City of London Marketing Suite, and now I know. There’s a full replica of the city downstairs, which is used when developers (usually from overseas) want to take a look at what’s available for redevelopment.
The working model has up to date proposals such as the forthcoming ‘Shard’ and it’s linked to a database that has details on all current properties. The eccentrically dressed bloke doing the talk walks up and down the Thames with a duster which ‘works wonders’.

A father and daughter contribute to a floral mosaic created in memory of the victims of 7 July 2005. A memorial service was held at Regent’s Park later that evening.

It’s the London Architecture Biennale and a herd of sheep has been driven from Borough Market across the Millennium Bridge and past St Paul’s Catherdral, to end up at St Bartholemew’s fair. Poor things were quite hot! Thousands of people were out to see the spectacle. We ran to catch up with them in scenes reminiscent of when we took photos of The Sultan’s Elephant visit – running all over the place!

The Sultan’s Elephant is a wonderful piece of French street theatre which came to London this weekend. We spent about three hours chasing a giant girl and an elephant that spouts water around the streets of Westminster. There were literally hundreds of thousands of people out to watch the girl and elephant play, and no one went home without a smile on their face!

The story is of a sultan who is tormented by his dreams of a time-travelling girl. He asks an engineer to contruct a time-travelling elephant (Royal de Luxe’s theatre piece is designed to coincide with Jules Verne’s centenary) in a quest to find her…

The elephant braves the Piccadilly crowds

Little girl waits for the elephant next to St James’s Park

A puppeteer at the side of the giant elephant

Elephant sprays the crowd

Nothing that the Sultan’s elephant crosses is safe! One of many squashed cars in central London

A puppeteer guides the Sultan’s elephant’s huge legs down the London streets

You can just make out the Sultan!

The elephant basks in the dust and trumpets loudly as it approaches the girl

Baby watches the giant elephant

This girl moves fast! You had to run to catch up.

The two are almost reunited

For more photos of The Sultan’s Elephant, check out my friend Sean’s photos from Day 2.

Architect John Soane’s museum of odd historical artefacts. Soane wanted the museum – which he designed to live in – to be used for amateurs and students in architecture, painting and sculpture. He was born in 1753 and died in 1837. The place is one of the lesser-known free museums in London and this is one photograph of the main hallway which just gives a general idea of the place. There is also Egyptian stuff underground to check out. Address is 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London.

Random ‘street art’ in Shoreditch somewhere. Or does this actually mean anything? Whatever it is, it scares me.

Things have been exceptionally busy, what with moving, unpacking and not having the internet at home for quite a while due to the re-ordering of the broadband. Nevertheless, I hope to get some decent photographs online as soon as possible. We are still around! I still want to see some of the exhibitions I mentioned earlier, plus there’s the new Jeff Wall exhibition at Tate Modern. Tip: If you’re a subscriber to Time Out you can get 2-for-1 tickets at the V&A for the Chinese photography/Diane Arbus exhibitions by showing your club card.
I heard that Polaroid is stopping the manufacture of the Polaroid SX-70 (Time Zero) film – the ones that hark back to the 1970s, that you can squish around to make those wonderful patterns we did a lot of a couple of years ago. The website says:

“Please be advised that Polaroid will be discontinuing the manufacture of its SX-70 / Time-Zero film within the first 3 months of 2006 due to the phasing out of components used in the production of this film.

“We realise that this is disappointing news for our loyal SX-70 users and we would like to underline that, although the circumstances made it inevitable, it was not an easy decision. We are very sorry for the inconvenience. For customers who would like to continue using their SX-70 camera, we can offer some film alternatives below. However, we do appreciate that these films do not offer the same characteristics as SX-70 / Time-Zero film.”

Apparently, an accident in the manufacturing process means that current supplies cannot be ‘manipulated’ for creative processes. Someone stuffed up big time! “This is an unintended – and unanticipated – consequence of a process change,” Polaroid said. “We understand the passion that the artistic community has for the Creative Uses technique, and want to assure you that we are taking this situation very seriously. We are currently working on possible solutions, though we cannot promise a replacement product. We are very sorry for this situation, and again, are treating it with the utmost urgency. We will post further updates on this site as they become available.”

If they manage to make another normal Polaroid film that can be manipulated, then that would be acceptable to me, but currently it seems really sad! I mean, sure you can do all that stuff in Photoshop. but the whole fun of it was basically physical, to do with squishing it all around. It was different every time, and it also had physical texture to it.