Lust for London
Posted by Bradley L. Garrett on Saturday Feb 13, 2010 Under Anthropology, Cultural Geography, Psychogeography, Uncategorized, Urban ExplorationLet us go then, you and I.
When the evening is spread out against the sky
like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets…
-T.S. Eliot
Passion
Hanging above bank station from a red crane that pulsates with foggy light warning off incoming aircraft, the metal making slow groaning sounds as the bitterly chill wind nudges the structure into a gentle sway, I look down at the bank of England and hear a cacophony of voices in the city.
But the voices I hear are not of the screaming hordes of city bankers, roping in whithered lovers for an evening of lust soon to be forgotten or morphed into office scandal, they are the voices of the past, explorers who walked these city streets in ours and other ages, who crawled into the dark folds of urban architectures looking for crack, photographs, walls to graph or poetry. I connect with myriad individuals who share my love for plenitude, the inanimate animated.
Dickens was a fellow nighttime crawler, a man wrapped up in a perpetual dream, an explorer of the uncanny who felt “a solemn consideration when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses it’s own secret; that in every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there is, in some of its imaginings, a secret the the heart nearest it!”
Beauty unmatched
Delving
Our secret is here, looking down on the city we work in, play in; the place where we encounter life in all it monstrous forms. And Dickens stands here with me, laughing at the audacity of this adventure, an approving smirk cracking his extravagant goatee.
I used to think of infiltration as an masochistic incarnation of urban exploration, a pale shadow of experience, disconnected from roots to history or respect for those that walked before us. But up here, staring down at this city that I am courting, the only city that has replaced my perpetual desire to be intimately attached to another human being, the city of blissful isolation where everyone minds their own fucking business, I am in love with the history of this moment and with the workers who are building our future, one brick at a time.
Building our future
In our limited time here on the planet, we can choose to stumble through life, working our job, drinking our beer in front of the blaring television in the darkness of “off-time”, blissfully uncaring. We can remain wrapped in an Indian Ashram, walking circles in the garden, in perpetual meditation for meaning, eschewing the trajectory of the age. Or we can hit back, head on, at the age in which we live, mining it for meaning and finding answers to questions both small and large, wherever those journeys may take us. None of these ways of life are better than another. They are just different, little epitaphs to tombs not yet constructed.
What luck!
The last time I watched The Big Lebowsky, I was stuck anew by the opening narration from the Old Timer:
“…Sometimes there’s a man…who, well, he’s the man for his time and place. He fits right in there.”
One day I may ask for your love London, but for now, thank you for returning my lust. For the first time in my life, I fit right in there.
Always yours,
The Goblinmerchant
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March 28th, 2010 at 10:16 pm
Beautiful shots, really breathtaking.
April 14th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
[…] (image credits:Bradley Garrett) […]
April 14th, 2010 at 4:12 pm
london is a crap hole
April 15th, 2010 at 1:32 am
I suppose you prefer Nashville or Little Rock?
April 15th, 2010 at 4:02 pm
[…] © Bradley Garrett […]
April 21st, 2010 at 10:22 pm
Bradley,
I am new to photography. What kind of camera, lense or anything else do you use to get these types of shots?
Thanks
April 21st, 2010 at 10:27 pm
Thanks for leaving a note Curtis. I am shooting with a Nikon D90 and in these shots a Sigma 10-20mm lens. It is a very nice setup for exploring. Basically, you want to shoot on aperture priority and adjust you aperture as needed depending on light (or lack thereof). From there, its just fine tuning and trail and error. Good luck with it!
April 21st, 2010 at 10:28 pm
Oh and above all get a nice tripod!
April 21st, 2010 at 10:23 pm
Any post effects?
April 21st, 2010 at 10:25 pm
Nope, just a border added!
April 21st, 2010 at 10:26 pm
Any hints to what types of lenses or camera you use?
April 21st, 2010 at 10:46 pm
Thanks for the reply Bradley. I appreciate the feedback.
April 22nd, 2010 at 3:14 am
Bradley,
Another question if I may? Do you shoot these shots manual? If so, what settings, f-stop and ISO and speed? I live in LA and I’d like to shoot some roof shops in LA that would compare.
Thanks,
Curtis
April 22nd, 2010 at 3:58 pm
No problem! At night I generally shoot at F3.5 and then adjust shutter speed as necessary. I shoot ISO auto normally and grab it in RAW, then I can change the ISO in photoshop if needed. Usually though, I find the D90 does a pretty good job with ISO.
May 5th, 2010 at 5:47 am
gorgeous photos! i just started an urban exploration blog of New York City. Check it out if youd like.
urbansetting.wordpress.com
keep up the amazing work!
June 3rd, 2010 at 7:13 am
Love these photos! and what a cool blog as well!
June 3rd, 2010 at 8:39 am
Thank you Amy!
June 3rd, 2010 at 9:14 am
Oh wow, I just had a look at your website Amy, it's beautifully done. Your book looks very interesting!
Did you happen to notice that I am working on a film project with a girl called Amy Cutler here in London (http://amycutler.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/5k-funding-exploring-londons-olympic-waterscape/) and have spent a modest amount of time on New York City rooftops (http://bradleygarrett.com/2010/03/24/empire/)? The strange intersections are confusing me horribly!
January 2nd, 2011 at 5:16 pm
[…] found New Court while we were looking for something else entirely. Waking in the City of London, we saw a giant […]
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July 28th, 2011 at 5:34 pm
Outstanding work once again! Thanks a lot!
November 15th, 2011 at 2:55 pm
To be honest, I cannot accept your point of view.
November 16th, 2011 at 7:04 am
Many, many thx for the author for this article.