Conway - Londontown: a photographic tour of The Citys delights

Copyright 2016 by Susannah Conway. Foreword copyright 2016 by Helen Storey MBE. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without written permission from the publisher. ISBN 978-1-4521-4088-9 (epub, mobi) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Conway, Susannah, author. pages cm ISBN 978-1-4521-3726-1 (alk. paper) 1. paper) 1.

London (England)Pictorial works.
2. London (England)Description and travel. I. Title. DA684.C73 2016 942.10022'2dc23 2015020002 Design by Brooke Johnson Typeset in FIN and Mercury Text G2 Chronicle Books LLC
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We lived in Belsize Park. Twiggy, perhaps the worlds first supermodel, lived nearby on the Crescent, as did the playboy of the 60s fashion photography world, David Bailey. Somehow, those that made their living taking creative risksthe poets, the writers, composers, actors, the film makers, the cartoonistsall gravitated to our small city village, a heart-held community I will always call home. Over the years, the jazz-coloured London I grew up in has only become more vibrant. Its possible to experience so many other parts of the world, simply by walking this citys streets. London is, and was, a place that can fertilise dreams.

It may have been a combination of the slow-looking-up toward adults who seemed so alive with energy and the feeling that the exotic was normal that shaped the creative life I went on to live. Different parts of the city carry memories of my own journeyfinding a way to know who I am, what kind of a woman I would go on to become, and where the edges of what I am capable of lie. Educated in the north west (a rough and dysfunctional comprehensive education), I lived for a while in the west (near a flyover to Heathrow Airport) and produced my first fashion collections in the East End (Brick Lane and Dalston). As much as the place, it is the people who make up London. And so, of course, its not just where you are, but whom you encounter. A Londoner isnt someone who was simply born and bred here, or someone who just visited a while and stayed.

As in other major cities, the speed of lifeand therefore how people experience time hereis particular. Thus, a Londoner is someone who lives on London time. Some feel they have to leave the city to find peace. I dont. You simply need to know where to go; then it becomes possible to find yourself amid nothing but birdsong, or to feel the collective anonymity in a throng of a Blade Runner night. In this book, you soon realize that Susannahs eyes naturally notice what a Londoners would, past the postcards and into the detail of a living London.

Flowers, people, sky, architecture, tattooed walls, Amy Winehouse as a Union Jacked angel, sun through a jar of honey, food of every kind, markets, canals, and the riversomehow she has caught the various movements of our lives from pram to grave. She shows us time in flow, between now and way back then, from the ancient green of Hampstead Heath to the 1950s concrete of South Bank, from Nelson Mandela in bronze to the man reading his book on the pavement. Shopping is carried, hands are held, and a future London is hinted at too, in the making and continued building of the city itself. To see London through Susannahs lenscovering north, south, east, west, and the centreunexpectedly brings all the other senses into play. Sound, scent, and a tactility of place and people are suggestedsensory impressions that are normally hard to imagine at a distance. But this is also a book about light of a particular kind.

And while London can be known for its rain, there are no images of the town against that backdrop. I wonder if this reveals something of Susannah herselfan intuitive aspiration on behalf of any population-busting city right now. For this is us in authentic relationship to our surroundings, the way we occupy space. Again I find myself wondering about that light. Is it the nature of the city, of memory, of photography? Or is Susannahs light perhaps an unconscious reminder to us from her, that sunlight falls the same on us all? Helen Storey MBE, February 2015 The Barbican, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS www.barbican.org.uk ( Barbican) Statue of Nelson Mandela, Parliament Square, SW14 ( Westminster) Queens Park Farmers Market, Salusbury Primary School, Salusbury Road, NW6 6RR www.lfm.org.uk/markets/queens-park ( Queens Park) Sclater Street, London E1 ( Shoreditch High Street)

Living alongside eight million other people is not without its challenges, yet I honestly cant think of anywhere else Id rather live. By no means the biggest city geographically nor the most densely populated, London mixes grandeur and history with commerce and multiculturalism like its been doing it for centurieswhich, of course, it has. There are so many layers to this city it would be impossible to experience it all in a week, a year, or even a lifetime. I love that theres always something new to discover when I step out the door into Londontownthats the name Ive always called her. London Town might be the name of a McCartney album, but to my mind its Londontown said with a wink and a faux-cockney accent. This beautiful city is so vast it holds the story of every soul whos ever walked along the banks of the Thames.

From Roman times to the twenty-first century, this is the place where laws are made and hearts are broken. Living here can feel like being in the centre of the universe, all played out to the faint rumble of the Underground, the pulse of our dear old Londontown. I like to think of myself as a Londoner-by-default because my parents were working in Londons New Scotland Yard when they metmy mother was a secretary and my father a policemanbut the truth is I was born in Surrey and grew up on the south coast of England. I didnt stake my claim on a piece of the city until I first moved here in 1995. I spent a decade building a career and life that suited me back then, a life that fell apart after a devastating bereavement in 2005. No longer able to function in the city, I moved back home to heal beside the sea.