I went to Notting Hill last week, and it was for me a notable event in several ways. I don’t often go that way except for my annual trips to carnival at the end of August, but I was there for the opening of a show at a gallery I’ve not visited before, one of a series of shows jointly organised by Tristan Hoare and Jean-Michel Wilmotte in the Wilmotte Gallery, in the former garage which became Lichfield studios (at 133 Oxford Gardens, London W10 6NE) and has now been converted into offices and an exhibition space by architect, designer and urban planner Wilmotte.
I was attending Shahidul Alam‘s first solo retrospective in the UK, My Journey as Witness‘ which runs until 18 November 2011. It was a memorable evening, although I was not able to stay as long as I would have liked, but was able to talk to both Alam and the Rosa Mario Falvo, the editor of his fine book, also called ‘My Journey as Witness.‘
I opened my copy this morning when I had a few minutes to spare while files were uploading and around an hour later I was still reading it. It is a work that is important not just for the photography but also for what it bears witness to about relationships between the majority world and the wealthy nations and and perhaps in particular about NGOs.
Back to lighter things, in August I was in Notting Hill and here are a few pictures to prove it:
Someone yesterday told me they had never been to carnival and described it as a monocultural event. Which perhaps just proves they have never been there or at least not in the last 20 or so years.
Part of its interest for me is in it being an event that very much now reflects the multicultural nature of London.
Plenty more (perhaps too many) pictures on My London Diary.
I’ve posted the work as two sets of pictures, one taken on the Fuji X100 and the other on the Nikon D300 DSLR as I was interested in seeing if I worked differently with the two cameras. In general I don’t really think so.
