I believe that the picture you take is the picture you get – no messing around, no cutting or cropping – you have to see, and capture the moment – that is your result, the essence of photography

Light has to be captured sympathetically, with its curves, highs and lows.  With a camera, everything is a reflection – I have to catch that reflection as completely and as humanely as is possible

Every frame is an instantaneous take on the entirety of our vision, but I have willed it, made it stand out from the crowd, distinct by parallax and by time from all the other possible images, to stand as a unique glimpse, an epiphany

These images are made from a mix of digital and analogue originals.  Mostly I prefer film, I find it more grounded, more sympathetic, more human; it retains its magic.

London Villages Project – The Regents Canal

The goal of the London Villages Project is to provide a photographic record of London now.
Its purpose is to create a shared body of work that is identifiable as a unique contribution to the record of London – its multiplicity of communities, its miscellany of histories, its medley of architecture; its boundaries real and imagined; its current creation, its reference to memory.
I have chosen to document the ‘linear village’ of the narrowboat community of Regent’s Canal. The distinguishing characteristics of the physical makeup of this neighbourhood are apparent.  It is at once a physical village with very clear boundaries between land and water, boats and buildings, and at the same time a virtual one, which passes through real villages as it wends its way from Paddington to Limehouse. 

It offers a unique perspective on the real London we are so familiar with, while opening up a secret world of the waterway and its narrowboats and travellers, which has its very own colour and form.

These photographs are a work in progress as part of LVP, a project which runs until Spring 2012 under the auspices of London Independent Photography.  Find out more at:

http://www.londonvillagesproject.org.uk/

http://www.londonphotography.org.uk/

Andy Preston
September 2011