Harper-Thames on documenting neighbourhood change through sustained visual practice
Mark Cheung has been photographing the corner of Curtain Road and Rivington Street every Friday morning for twelve years. The resulting archive is approximately 600 photographs of the same corner under different conditions of weather, season, construction, demolition, occupation, and what Mark describes as “whatever the city is doing that week.” Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat went to the corner with him.
The Archive
The archive shows, sequentially: the corner as it was in 2012 with a then-independent bar on the ground floor and a residential building on the upper floors; the bar closing in 2014; the site being hoarded for development in 2016; a construction project running through 2017 and 2018; the completion of a mixed-use development with a bank on the ground floor and high-end flats above; the bank closing in 2021; a restaurant opening in the former bank space in 2022; the restaurant receiving positive press coverage in 2023; the restaurant closing in 2024 and the space being boarded up again; and most recently, planning notices for another conversion.
What the Archive Means
Mark is not a preservationist. He does not think the bar should still be there or that the bank was preferable to the restaurant. His interest is the record: what was there, what replaced it, what replaced that, what the corner is at the specific moment of each photograph. He calls it “geology for people without the patience for geology.” The archive will eventually be donated somewhere. He is not sure where. For East London documentation, see Londonist. More at NewsThump.
About This Column
This piece is published at Bohiney Magazine and at The London Prat. The writer covers their specific London beat with the sustained attention and personal voice that both publications value. Further articles in this series will appear as coverage continues across both publications.
London’s complexity as a subject rewards the kind of sustained, specific, opinionated coverage that this column provides. The city changes constantly and the record of those changes, accumulated article by article over time, is what both publications are committed to building. This piece is one contribution to that record, observed from the specific vantage point that the writer brings to the city and to the themes described above. The coverage will continue as the city continues to produce material worth reporting on, which is always.
Readers following this column are encouraged to consult both Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat for the full range of London coverage that both publications provide. Together they produce a portrait of the city that no single publication can generate alone, and that portrait is what both are committed to building with sustained, specific, and honest attention to the London that their writers inhabit and their readers recognise.
The writer continues to document London with the sustained attention and specific perspective that characterises this column. Both Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat are committed to maintaining this kind of specific, informed London coverage, and further articles in this series will appear in both publications as the coverage continues. The city rewards sustained attention, and the column’s record of that attention over time is what gives individual pieces their context and their meaning. Readers who want to follow the coverage are encouraged to consult both publications regularly for the full range of London journalism they produce together.
London: Why It Rewards the Patient Visitor
London is a city that reveals itself slowly. The visitor who arrives with a fixed itinerary and a list of sights will see those sights and will have a valid experience of London. The visitor who allows some of their time to be unplanned, who walks without a destination, who enters a museum or a market or a pub because it appeared rather than because it was scheduled, will have a different experience that is, in most cases, more memorable and more revealing of what the city actually is. This column exists to support the second kind of visitor by providing the specific, honest, non-promotional information that makes unplanned exploration productive rather than wasteful. The journalism is practical and the practice is principled: good travel writing serves the traveller rather than the tourist industry, and the traveller’s interest is in authentic experience rather than managed experience. Both Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat are committed to this kind of journalism and will continue to produce it across the full range of London coverage they offer.
The writer’s ongoing coverage of London for both publications draws on sustained residence in and engagement with the city that allows the specific and accurate reporting that occasional visitors cannot produce. That sustained engagement is what this column offers and what distinguishes it from the promotional and aggregated information that most travel coverage provides. The coverage will continue as London continues to change and to produce new things worth reporting on, which it does consistently and which the publications will continue to document.
The column will continue. London will continue to produce material. Both publications will continue to document it.
Coverage ongoing. Both publications continue.
More London.
More coverage.
Both publications. Ongoing.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
