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Each year, FT Weekend Magazine’s director of photography Emma Bowkett commissions artists to show us how they see London. Here, four photographers offer their responses. Heather Agyepong, Hannah Hughes and Jermaine Francis will be on show at Photo London’s 10th anniversary exhibition, London Lives. Lucia Pizzani will show this work as part of a solo booth presentation
Lucia Pizzani
Dulwich Woods, Brockwell Park and Tooting Common are some of south London’s green spaces that provided joy, calm and wellbeing during the Covid lockdowns for all of us in the area. It was during the pandemic that I started working on these collages. Titled Acorazada (Armoured) they convey the idea of nature as a refuge, protecting us from diseases, a barrier that absorbs viruses and shelters many species.
The works presented here feature two of the more prominent plants of these habitats: oaks and ferns. Both are ancient species, linked to old folkloric tales of the region. These two images, titled “Verde London, Naciente and Creciente”, from the Spanish meaning being born and growing, depict a human who has hybridised with the trees and plants. My migration from Caracas to London is similar to a story shared by many in this city. It is about a being that lays roots and adapts, with nature as an endless beacon.
Lucia Pizzani’s FT commission will be shown as part of “Of Roots and Vessels” at Victoria Law Projects, Photo London
Hannah Hughes
Sir John Soane’s Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the former home of the renowned London architect, houses another kind of city from the one encountered beyond its walls. Inside is an arrangement of archaeological fragments, plaster casts and models that Soane is quoted as having called “studies for my own mind”.
I chose the museum for My London as an opportunity to respond to this prompt from Soane, that the city outside can be reflected differently from within the house. I returned to the museum to expand the speculative processes of making in my own studio, and to discover through Soane how material evidence of the past can generate new forms in the present.
I drew from the least tangible spaces within the museum, identifying shapes from the empty areas between fragments, using their edges as the guide. These negative spaces were produced in clay and reflective polished brass, assembled and photographed in dialogue with the objects in the collection. In these mirror images, the void spaces have become solid to offer new material encounters.
Hannah Hughes’s FT commission will be displayed in Photo London’s “London Lives” exhibition
Heather Agyepong
I had been struggling with severe burnout after a wonderful but tumultuous year.
I have never been able to fully rest in London but I didn’t have the funds to go abroad. I googled “Spiritual Retreat” and found solace at The Royal Foundation of St Katharine in Limehouse. Never have I experienced such physical and spiritual rest.
During the day my destination of choice was their chapel; in its centre was a large compass, which they used to set up meditative activities. It left me with a deep peace and comfort I had never experienced in London before.
Heather Agyepong’s work is part of the “London Lives” exhibition at Photo London
Jermaine Francis
“Space is a doubt: I have to constantly mark it, to designate it. It’s never mine, never given to me, I have to conquer it.”
— Georges Perec, “Space (Continuation and End)”, from “Species of Spaces and Other Pieces”.
I have become obsessed with time, perhaps brought on by middle age and a heightened awareness of my own mortality. I have embraced photography’s unstable property as a device to enable what Roland Barthes referred to as a time-travel-like state.
I migrated to London from a working-class town in the post-industrial region of the Black Country, in the West Midlands. A place that helped create me and make me. London then shaped me.
There are spaces in London where a cacophony of historical narratives exists, intertwined with lands and people on the other side of the world. Events in distant countries and the lives of their inhabitants are often silent due to geographical separation, yet these people are connected. The spirits of the past exist in the present.
In these images I’ve created a sensory kaleidoscope of interacting layers, mimicking history. Temporality, multiplicity and plural surfaces collide both harmoniously and with friction. The Black women in these images were unknown for years; while the stories of Dido Belle and Mary Seacole have been amplified, many others remain silent. In London, traces of their presence can be found in photographed public spaces.
It appears we are in an era where non-pluralistic narratives prevail, rather than the richness and complexity of history. With these images, I want to push beyond our comfort zones, to be expansive and embrace the potential of openness.
Jermaine Francis’s FT commission will be displayed in Photo London’s “London Lives” exhibition
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