Hi there! ✌️ Been a while. It’s so great to see you, still.
We’re nearing the end of the year. For me, the real celebration at this time is giving thanks for making it for another 365 days, and the practice of reflecting on what’s passed. Yes, it was 2023; the year I taught myself how to better balance work and art, the year we got married, the year that we ‘slowed down’ on travel [editor’s note: 8 cities, 5 countries]. Before all of that, I think of it as the year we fully lived in London.
I published a zine about it! You can find out more at zine.mackiec.xyz
A Fully Realised City
Toronto was my first ‘city’ experience. I lived there for 5 years. I have the map in my head, and I could walk across the major portion of downtown (roughly, Parkdale to Distillery District) in about 3 hours. Most of it looks the same. Concrete public spaces built at the cheapest possible cost to the city, with a background of steel and glass private spaces built far too expensively for anyone to realistically exist in them. Pretty, tree lined streets with 100 year old houses in the west, east and north are out of reach unless you’re generationally wealthy or squeeze 5 roommates into a 3-bedroom place (been there!)
The housing part stays true for London, to be fair. But what you get for the effort! No contest. Numerous parks, a rational public transit network, abundant green space for everyone, and access to daily necessities everywhere. Britain as a place is still ridiculously split between class divides, but in London, you can eat a Gregg’s in the Queen’s rose garden. That’s fine, as a thing. I don’t know of another place that could be true.
New York and Paris are two obvious comparison options, but London in my mind still stands alone within their company. Purely judging its characteristics as a city, NYC is too tall. When you need to start putting big weights in your buildings to stop them from swaying so much they topple over… that’s too high. I love weaving in and out of the grid of streets that make up the cacophony of manhattan, but I find it incredibly hard to photograph, with it’s ever-changing light patterns and endless attention-grabbing people. When photographers can navigate it well, I find it so impressive.
Paris comes the closest to liveability that I have available to me as comparisons, at least in the category of ‘places I have been’. My issue with imagining living there is that I would want so badly to be French. To drink and eat in a French way, to converse in French, to protest like the French, to casually and easily dismiss things or people that don’t interest me like native Parisians might. I could never be that. I’d always be ‘la canadienne’ - not bad… but not French.
People Passing Through
We’ve only been in London full time since September of 2022, and already I’ve seen more friends and family in the past year and a bit than I did in all the few years before this combined. Now, well yes… Covid. It kind of stands to reason. Though I think it’s still valid to say that London is still true to its Roman roots as a key trading route stop, connecting the world - initially via the Thames, now via Heathrow.
What it means as a photographer is that there are constantly new ideas being opened up to me. The world comes to London. Tourists, Students, Visitors, yes but also shows, exhibitions, installations, restaurants. Should I ever get bored of capturing the city, there are a thousand trains any hour to choose from that open doors to Oxford, Cambridge, Leeds, Edinburgh, Brighton, Cornwall, or hundreds of tiny towns with hot tea waiting. (Skipping Birmingham, soz. For reasons already written about.) I’m almost more interested to travel locally than I am internationally - Scotland feels as different a place to London as Hamburg or Porto might.
I hope I’m not just passing through. London feels so much like home now that it feels strange to have people ask me about my accent, because I forget I’m still the odd one out. Seeing the city in a TV show, especially if it’s created and told here, feels like visiting an old pal. My art practice has never been stronger, because the city is so infinitely inspiring even coming up on 3 years in the UK. Goals to produce street photography work here, or any kind, feel more long-term and concrete - my photos of the city now will, I hope, inform and collaborate with work about the city that I produce later in life.
Don’t ask me what football club I support though - still haven’t figured that one out. 🫥
Editor’s Note: Both 2023 zines, ‘WHERE ARE WE GOING’ and ‘WE FIND WHAT WE LIKE’ are freely available on my store, zine.mackiec.xyz - free worldwide shipping, and a free good handshake or friendly hug if we ever meet!