About the collection:
I started visiting the UK in 1993. Even though some of the folks I went to visit there live in the London area, it wasn't until several years later that I started to explore London itself.
How does a traveler visiting for just a few days at a time perceive and absorb such a large and diverse place as London? It is overwhelming at first, but there is something about a city of this magnitude which draws one on. For a California suburbanite, there is a curious mixture of the familiar and the strange. "Two countries separated by a common language" is often ascribed to the difference between American versus British English: the same goes for the culture. So much that's familiar mixed in with so much that is just skewed enough to seem odd, but intriguingly comfortable in its 'almost familiarity'.
My friends started my explorations of London by taking me to a couple of interesting places and then setting me free to my wanderings. I don't read too many travel guides: I prefer to explore without too much to bias my eyes. Now, every time I go, I ride the trains and tube, walk through places in search of discovery ... places that have now, over time and glimpses, become familiar and iconic. They present an ongoing study.
In this collection, I have concentrated on a couple of areas in London that I have visited several times. I attempt to capture my personal relationship to London as a traveler in iconic expressions of the urban landscape and the interplay of people I encounter along the way.
- Godfrey
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