Uni Project: Impressions of London

We as individuals have different views of the city, so for this project we had to create eight A6 postcards portraying our viewpoint with an accompanying diary to support the evidence. At first, with the thought of the 'diary' in my head, i decided that i would do a timeline based postcard series of my events through 24 hours since i was planning to go shopping in Central London that day. Then i realised that would not be very realistic of my viewpoint, and decided to base it all completely in my local area as that is where i am for most of my time. I also wanted to show people the "real" side to London, rather than what they see on the television, i wanted them to see how "my" London- East London, really is, and how life is, in a council estate.

Below are the eight "raw" photographs that i have taken, before being edited into postcards for the presentation, so that they can be seen in all their detail. The "diary" has now been interpreted as the accompanying text with each photo to explain what it is and a similar caption text will be at the back of each postcard aswell.

The first picture is a 'stencil graffiti' sprayed onto a council flat wall by a Banksy wannabe, who has cheekily labelled my area 'Safe', with the obvious intended irony that it really isnt. I thought this was both clever and funny at the same time.


The next picture is that of my local underground station, first of all, because it represents my local area, aswell as the fact that it is the exact station replaced with that of 'Walford East' in the East End based TV Series 'Eastenders'.


The following two have been chosen because i believe the "London Underground train" and the "Black cab" are both symbols of London, and since they can both be found in my area, they simply CANNOT be left out.


I have decided to photograph the "Black cab" next to its neighbouring trash trolley so as to not give it a sense of romanticism but a sense of realism, if that makes sense? :S loll


The next picture is the closest i could to taking a birds-eye view of a typical council estate and i tried to capture as much of the happenings as i possibly could. In this picture, you could see the residential housing, School, playground, football pitch as well as various construction works in progress.


This picture is a more detailed view of the residential housing that can be found in a council estate.


This is one of the many pieces of graffiti found on my estate, and i have chosen this because it has been on the wall for at least 15 years and has become a symbol of my estate, and it also shows the multiculturalism found within London.


Market stalls are part and parcal of life in the East End, so i decided to include a photograph of one. This is at the end because i want the viewer to finish off with a bright a cheerful picture of East London ;D haha