London, 17/01/2010:
My last morning in London, my dad and I took a walk through Marylebone one last time. We wandered down a few side streets, finding a park and this church. I love the contrast of the old building with the modern car.
London, 16/01/2012:
No pictures for the 16th. After lugging my camera around the day before, my back/shoulder was a bit sore and since my parents and I were just heading to a museum, I thought I wouldn’t need it. I was wrong.
We went to the Tate Modern, which I had not been to since it first opened in 2000. In case you are unaware, the Tate Modern is on the Thames, looking back into London to face St. Paul’s Cathedral. The recently installed Millennium Bridge provides a walking route across the river to the museum, or you can walk from the London Bridge tube station, as we did. The entire walk runs along the river with perfect panoramic views of the London cityscape. And I forgot my camera.
I also would have liked to photograph some of the exhibits. I enjoyed the photography exhibit on new documentary forms, particularly the work of Akram Zaatari. He was a studio photographer, so his work shows not only the culture of Lebanon in the early 1970s but also how people thought they should look and act. His work has an honest, raw quality about it, but is quite different from documentary photography, where the photographer tries to showcase the world from an impartial viewpoint. Zaatari’s work shows people as they portray themselves, honestly or not.
I also loved the sculpture exhibit on energy and process. Some of my favorite pieces were the carvings of trees from blocks of sawn units of timber (he reversed the process; instead of turning a tree into timber, he turned timber back into a tree by following the knots of the wood) and the red staircase, which was transparent and ethereal from every angle.
After walking through the museum, we had lunch in the restaurant on the top floor. The floor-to-ceiling windows showed expansive views of London, especially St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the mid-afternoon light was radiant. I have never wanted my camera more.
So, I now resolve to take my camera everywhere, even when I don’t expect to want it. And, I will be buying a new strap for my camera bag, to make it a bit more comfortable.
London, 15/01/2012:
After the British Museum, we hopped back on the tube and headed to Notting Hill to check out Portobello Road. This area is a bit more rugged/hippyish than many other parts of London. To me, nothing is as hippyish as the Haight Ashbury in San Francisco, but I found the area cute and more honest than a lot of the other shopping streets.
I snapped this picture as we were walking to Portobello road from the Notting Hill Gate tube stop. I’m really interested in street art lately, and this fits the bill. And yes, I enjoyed making you look.
London, 15/01/2012:
The world is a phenomenally small place. A friend of mine from high school just started a study abroad program at Oxford. She had the weekend free and had never seen London, so we got together yesterday and I showed her around a bit. It’s a bit weird (though also a lot of fun) to meet a friend from San Francisco in London and then make plans to go to Italy (!) together in April.
We met at the Marble Arch and then walked down Oxford Street (see earlier photographs) to the British Museum, one of my favorite places in London. When I visited London for the first time, I told my dad that I wanted to live in the British Museum.
One of the reasons I love the British Museum so much is because as you walk from room to room, you are jumping into the past of different countries. It’s a remarkable collection of history from the most culturally and politically important eras of history.
I also enjoy the British Museum’s questionable history. My freshman seminar focused on art theft and grave robbery, so I wrote a paper on the Elgin Marbles and if they should be returned to Greece. It’s a difficult question, since both sides have valid arguments and the legality of Lord Elgin’s paperwork at the time was questionable. Yes, it is true that moving the marbles to England saved them from destruction in Greece but it is also true that they were damaged in the move and that they would be perfectly safe in Greece now (and would have been safe for a while). I ultimately decided (as the ever pragmatist) that it doesn’t really matter, since the British Museum (and the British government) will never give them up.
Image descriptions:
- A depiction of an Egyptian god from the Ancient Egypt exhibit on the ground floor. I was drawn to the number stamped on the carving, since it shows how museum practices have changed over the years.
- Three female statues from the Ancient Greece exhibit (though not a part of the Eglin Marbles). I loved the subtle portrayal of wind in the clothing carved in such an unrelenting medium.
- The Rosetta Stone. Enough said.
London, 12/01/2012:
Here’s another photograph from yesterday’s walk down Oxford Street. Whenever I have my camera with me, I seem drawn to looking up. I enjoy seeing an ordinary street from a new angle. Here, I was interested in the interplay of modern and classical architecture.
Not pictured: a McDonald’s in the ground floor of the red brick building.
I'm a college student living in Freiburg, Germany for six months. As an avid photographer, I will be visually documenting my experiences. Enjoy!
