black and white photography by rob gardiner.

At precisely 6.09pm on Monday night, to borrow the famous line from The Godfather, warring mobs “took to the mattresses” at Trafalgar Square in London. It was the latest flashmob, a loosely organised group of hundreds of people who don’t know each other but meet spontaneously, do something silly for a few minutes, then go their separate ways. Now long considered passe (they are so 2003!), the aren’t-we-cool posturing has disappeared along with the TV cameras. London’s first flash mob was a sit-in at a Sofa Store, so it is only fitting that the latest incarnation was taking to the mattresses in probably the biggest pillow fight London has ever seen. Equal parts performance art, sport, dance, riot, party, and snow-making machine, the goose down did fly.

Two images below, but I’ve placed 15 images here.

Another walk along the Thames in London, this time spanning the 200 yards between Southwark bridge and Cannon Street railway bridge. Previous entries can be seen in part 1, part 2, 2b, 2c. All photos on Polaroid 55 4x5" film with a pinhole camera exposures from 3-25 minutes each.

Pinhole photograph, 4x5 format on Polaroid 55 film.

London is such that you can wander around and discover a nice
view, return home to see if there is anything noteworthy about it, and
discover it was Shakespeare’s House, well off the tourist trail at least on this particular Sunday.

A pinhole camera, if you did not know, is a camera with no lens,
shutter, viewfinder, or meter, and is essentially just a piece of film
in an empty box. My 4x5 pinhole does have groundglass, so if you throw
a big black horsecloth over your head, you get to see a faint outline.
It produces images like this, this, this, and this. I have pinholes littered around my site, I should really clean this place up.