The School of Life

Joan Byrne on Photographing London

I’m a Londoner, so why would I want to spend a weekend in my home town photographing every street curio that doesn’t move, or at least not too fast?  I can't really tell you except that intuition told me it would be fun. So I signed up for one of The School of Life’s Photographing London holiday weekends led by two dazzling photographers: Matt Stuart and Stephen McLaren.  Google them for photos that capture the surreal in the real.

When I stepped into Bloomsbury, home to The School of Life, my holiday began: the sun shone, the architecture glowed and none of it looked like Peckham Rye where I live. 

 

About twenty of us gathered: several Americans, the rest of us natives.  We were encouraged to ‘snap vigorously’ and our first mission was to photograph interesting examples of body language.  We looked at examples of successful street photography, before meandering to the British Museum, one of the few public buildings where you can photograph with impunity (and your camera). Foreign languages filled the air. It was, as promised, like being far away.

 

From antiquities to Oxford Street is quite a jump, but we made it and encouraged by Matt and Stephen acted like paparazzi on the West End’s mean streets.  We wended our way through two ribbon-thin alleys I’ve never seen in my life… and eventually arrived at the Photographer’s Gallery where we paused before hitting Soho. 

 

Early evening back at The School of Life, weary and hungry, we enjoyed a delicious meal ferried from the restaurant across the road; wine and conversation flowed.

 

The FleaPit in Columbia Road’s floral paradise was our starting point for day two.  I don’t know how many years it is since I was in Columbia Road, but I rued every Sunday morning that I had not been there.  Set regular challenges to photograph themes, this time we were to snap with colour in mind: ‘Think Matisse but leave out the flowers!'  And it was around there that I drank the best cup of coffee ever, made by the world’s top barista who operates from a shack on a side street off the main drag.  I’d heard about this guy and now like a tourist I had discovered him. 

 

Brick Lane was next with its spirit of elsewhere and market stalls that sell something of everything and people who are surely out to be photographed.  In the nearby super trendy covered market I savoured a dish of delicious sushi, wiped my brow for the day was steaming and thought, yes, I really am on holiday. 

 

Next on the itinerary: the Bank of England which I’m not sure if I’ve even seen before.  Here our mission to photograph everyone and everything that appealed to our sense of humour or aesthetics came to a close. 

 

We walked back to Bloomsbury for a show ‘n’ tell  - each of us showed five photos to match the assignments.  We ate scrumptious carrot cake and toasted our holiday happiness with a cool glass of Pimms.

 

I’m told (one person had a pedometer) that we walked 14 miles on the first day and eight the next.  Each of us had been on our own journey: to improve technique, to find the nerve to take candid shots or solely for the pleasure of giving our cameras a workout and, in my case,  see more of London.  We left with a sense of achievement and the camaraderie that comes from sharing a memorable vacation.  And, we had our snaps to show the folks back home.  Here are a few of mine.

 

More photographs from The School of Life’s Photographing London holidays can be found here.

 

The holiday runs again on 12 and 13 September. Details can be found here.  

Paul Elliman's Alphabet

No words are necessary - we just love it.

Alain de Botton on going to the zoo alone

People look at you strangely if you make a trip to the zoo without a child. You should ideally have a gang of children, evidence of dribbled ice-cream and some balloons as well. Contemplating zoo enclosures with oriental small-clawed otters or leopard geckos hardly seems an adult way to pass the afternoon.

 

But last week my five year old nephew pulled out at the last minute (he'd remembered it was his best friend's birthday), and I stubbornly decided to go through with our afternoon as planned. My first thought - after buying an ice-cream, though not a balloon - was how strange animals look. Apart from the odd cat, dog or horse, it's years since I've seen a real animal, an extraordinary, jungle-bookish sort of creature.

 

Take the camel: a u-shaped neck, two furry pyramids, eyelashes that seem coated in mascara, and a set of yellow buck teeth. There was a guide on hand with some facts: camels can go ten days in the desert without drinking, their humps aren't filled with water, it's fat, the eyelashes are designed to keep out sandstorms, and their liver and kidneys extract all moisture from food, leaving their dung dry and compact. They're some of the best adapted creatures on the planet, concluded the guide - at which point I experienced a childish burst of jealousy at the inadequacy of the human liver and kidney, and our lack of furry bumps to cut out the need for a midafternoon snack.

 

If creatures end up looking so strange, it's a sign of their adaptation to the natural environment, said Darwin, and no one would doubt it in Regent's Park. The Sri Lankan Sloth bear has long mobile lips and two missing upper incisors so that it can suck ants and termites out of their nests, a distinctive facial feature which no one who relied on lunch from a deli would bother with. I had some melancholy thoughts finishing my ice-cream staring at some tar-coloured, pygmy hippos wallowing in mud. The word dinosaur came to mind, not that they resembled them, but they evoked the dinosaur as a byword for fatally slow adaptation to an environment. There are only a few of them left in the world, the future in their natural African habitats lies with lither, more libidinous gazelle-like things.

 

A zoo visit proves the cliché that it takes all sorts. Every creature seems wonderfully adapted for some things, hopelessly suited for others. The horseshoe crab could never get in the pages of Vogue (it looks like a miniature military helmet with bow legs), and couldn't read Gibbon, but it's a star at surviving in deep water and not getting eaten by sharks. It lives quietly, sliding occasionally across the ocean floor to grab a mollusc.

 

It's hard not to identify with animals, not to land on creatures one might name if forced into an after-dinner round of what-would-you-be-if-you-had-to-be-an-animal game (sadly losing out to pictionary as evening entertainment). Flaubert loved the game; in his letters, he compared himself variously to a boa constrictor (1841), an oyster in its shell (1845), and a hedgehog rolling up to protect itself (1853, 1857). I came away identifying with the Malayan tapir, the baby okapi, the llama and the turtle (esp. on Sunday evenings).

 

A zoo unsettles in simultaneously making animals seem more human and humans more animal. "Apes are man's closest relative," reads a caption by the orang-outang enclosure, "how many similarities can you see?" Far too many for comfort, of course. Shave him, dress him in a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, and the one scratching his nose in the corner of the cage is a cousin of mine, except that Jo has a large flat in Belsize Park and spent two weeks in Dorset with his kids this summer. In May 1842, Queen Victoria visited Regents park zoo, and in her diary, noted of a new Orang Outang from Calcutta: "He is wonderful, preparing and drinking his tea, but he is painfully and disagreeably human." (Reading this, I imagine being captured and placed in a cage like a room in a Holiday Inn, with three meals a day passed through a hatch, and nothing to do other than watch TV - while a crowd of giraffes look on at me, giggling and videoing, licking giant ice-creams, while saying what a short neck I have).

 

Inevitably perhaps, I walk out of the zoo with a pair of Desmond Morris spectacles. Calling Sarah up for dinner loses its innocence, it's merely part of the mating ritual of the human species, not fundamentally different from what llamas are up to when they start to whistle strangely at each other on autumn nights.

Then again, there is relief to be found in the ability to view one's antics as complex manifestations of essentially simple animal drives; for food, shelter and survival of one's genetic off-spring. I may take out a yearly membership for Regent's Park zoo.

 

Pictures by Garry Winogrand, from The Animals.

Alain is leading a holiday to Heathrow airport with The School of Life and giving a sermon on pessimism on 22 March 2009.

Sophie Howarth on The Day to Day Life of Albert Hastings

I've just come across a wonderful new photobook by KayLynn Deveney. The Day to Day Life of Albert Hastings documents an unlikely and very touching friendship. When Albert Hastings was eighty-five, photography student KayLynn moved near his small flat in Newport, South Wales. She started to observe the small rituals and routines—gardening, laundry, grocery shopping—that made up Bert's life. A friendship slowly developed and the two have now co-produced a book which is a poignant chronicle of ageing, living alone, and the small things that make up our daily lives. It's deservedly been put up for several photography book awards. Read the introduction here or buy the book here. 

 

Sophie is Director of The School of Life.

Sophie Howarth on David Spero's Churches

David Spero's new book Churches is my favourite photography book of the year. It documents an array of buildings currently used as churches, none of which was built for the purpose. Often temporary, semi-permanent or unconsecrated, the buildings are located where we would least expect to find them, in industrial estates, shopping parades, houses, garages, cinemas, above pubs and commercial properties. Spero finds a spirit (whether Holy or not is up to us) in the most unlikely places and even for a non-believer like me, there is something very moving about the places in which people can manage to find meaning. What really comes across is a sense of striving for spaces of community and support in the face of the displacements caused by modern urban existence. We're stocking the book in The School of Life on on our shelf 'for those with a God-shaped hole'.

Sophie is Director of The School of Life

Last minute holiday ideas from The School of Life

If you still haven't organised your summer holiday, here's what The School of Life recommends:

Lots of money and time to spare?
Head to the Lofoten Islands at the 67th and 68th degree parallels North of the Arctic Circle in Norway. The journey is something of a challenge but you'll make up time when you get there - the islands have nearly 24 hours of daylight at this time of year.

No money but time to spare?
Take advice from the 18th century French thinker and philosopher Xavier De Maistre who found himself confined to his room in 1790 when he was arrested after a duel. With only a butler and a dog for company, de Maistre managed to fill his time happily by embarking on a fantastical journey around his bedroom. By treating his bed, his armchair, the artworks on the wall and his small library as major tourist sites, he reflected on their history, their importance to him, and the philosophical questions that they brought to mind. He imagined how he'd like to make love to all the women in the world, indeed to all the women who ever lived; playacted conversations with the illustrious dead, and even invited his readers to imagine sitting down to breakfast with him.

No time off till September?
Wait a few weeks and then come on holiday with The School of Life. From 19-21 September, Martin Parr is leading a trip to the Isle of Wight to explore the vulgarity, nostalgia and brashness of British holidaymaking in its full glory. Find out more here.

Sophie Howarth on Tim Walker's fantasy world

Do see Tim Walker's exhibition at the Design Museum. This is outrageously imaginative stuff: lavish, absurd, fabulous images often based on the stories Tim read as a kid. Camping indoors, gardening in the bath, pink elephants, giant swans, ice-creams galore, a bit of Cecil Beaton, a lot of Lewis Carroll. You want to climb into these make-believe sets and just play.

Sophie is Director of The School of Life