Last Stop (Ciltli)

Last Stop, a double-sided concertina book exploring London’s diversity. Photographed through the windows of its double decker buses.

In 2008 I returned to London having spent the last nine years living and working in Eastern Europe and Turkey and was surprised by the speed of change that had taken place. I wanted to document the city, its movements and migrations, its landscape and architecture, its diversity and energy. I wanted to understand how so many people from all over the world manage to share the same space.
The double-decker bus allows me to frame the city, to give it sense. The lower level is very close to the street, where I’m almost touching the people in the traditional form of street photography. The upper deck allows me the distance to capture the layers of the urban landscape. Between these two positions everything shifts, along with the movement of the bus.

I was also fascinated by how people use public space in a big city, by that sense of shared invisibility. In sitting behind the window, I also became invisible but the bus also gives you the privilege to see and understand the emotional content of London’s everyday movements, rhythms and rituals.

The essence of the project is that you might take the same route everyday but what you see, the ebb and flow on the street takes on a random nature. To capture this flow, the concertina format reflects and mimics the feel of a bus journey, but more importantly it gives the viewer the opportunity to create their own journeys by spreading the book out and combining different images together. This moves the book away from an author-led linear narrative to one of multiple possibilities.

By supporting this book you will be giving space to another voice that considers the contemporary city in all its complex multicultural diversity, and through the many layers of its history.