25 September - 01 October 2023
Westbourne Bridge. London, England 12 September 2023. Photo Robert Gumpert
Built sometime after 1909 for the Great Western Railway it bridges the tracks running in and out of Paddington. Used by motor and foot traffic the bridge connects with the Harrow Road and Westbourne Terrace. Since 2008 I’ve made it a habit to walk the bridge at least once during any visit to London. Until a couple of weeks ago, the last time was February of 2020 as the pandemic hit. For more from the bridge go here
Westbourne Bridge. London, England 12 September 2023. Photo Robert Gumpert
Built sometime after 1909 for the Great Western Railway it bridges the tracks running in and out of Paddington. Used by motor and foot traffic the bridge connects with the Harrow Road and Westbourne Terrace. Since 2008 I’ve made it a habit to walk the bridge at least once during any visit to London. Until a couple of weeks ago when I found the bridge mostly painted white,, the last time was February of 2020 as the pandemic hit. For more from the bridge go here
Photography
Mother Jones: “I’m Doing the Best I Can”: Stories From California’s Unsheltered Community | Interviews by Aaron Schrank, Photography by Sam Comen
La Galerie Rouge: Les Mondes de Jill Freedman
The Guardian: ‘I try to photograph the unseen’: Michael Kenna on 50 years of shooting breathtaking landscapes | by Graeme Green
Aperture: How Archives Illuminate the History and Culture of Ghana | by Kobby Ankomah Graham
The Guardian: Gauri Gill wins Prix Pictet award
The Guardian: Wildfires, war and rightwing extremism: 50 years of Europe in photos, part two | Jon Henley and Guy Lane
LA Times: 9,000 asylum seekers cross from Mexico to Eagle Pass, Texas | by Robert Gauther/staff photographer
1854 Photography: The inside story of Sofia Karim's activist curation | by Ravi Ghosh
The Guardian: Don McCullin: ‘Photographing landscapes takes my mind off all I’ve seen. It’s healing’ | by Michael Segalov
The New Yorker: Jamie Lee Taete’s The Playful and Provocative Images of “Christian Tourism” | by Casey Cep
The New Yorker: Barbara Mensch/Watching the Southern Tip of Manhattan Change, for Forty Years | by Nicole Rudick
The Guardian: Reeperbahn rendezvous: the glorious dive bar photos of Anders Petersen | by Simon Bowcock
The Guardian: ‘I am the witness and the subject’: Magnum photographer Jim Goldberg on telling his own story | by Sean O’Hagan
Culture, Art and Design
National Portrait Gallery. London, England. 15 September 2023. Photo Robert Gumpert
The Guardian: ‘It was like Blade Runner meets Berlin rave’: the Manchester sink estate with the UK’s wildest nightclub | by Daniel Dylan Wray
the blue moment: Richard Williams - Miles à l’Olympia
LA Times: Cassandro changed the role of exoticos in lucha libre | by Hector Diaz
PRINT Magazine: Cutting into Alexa Edgerton’s Viral Cake Letters | by Charlotte Beach
Washington Post: Phone call etiquette: Rules for calling, texting and leaving voice mails | by Heather Kelly
JSTOR Daily: No Joke - Using humor to mask and normalize hatred and bigotry has a long, ugly history. | Pratiksha Thangam Menon
JSTOR Daily: The San Diego Lowrider Archival Project - The lessons of “low and slow.” | by lberto López Pulido
LA Times: The scientific reason why you can't stop going to Disneyland | by Daryl Austin
Other Stuff
The Tube. London, England. 13 September 2023. Photo Robert Gumpert
The Guardian: TechScape: AI-made images mean seeing is no longer believing | by Chris Stokel-Walker
404 Media: First Google Search Result for Tiananmen Square “Tank Man” Is AI Generated Selfie | Emanuel Maiberg
Scroll: The dismantling of democracy in India will affect the whole world | by Arundhati Roy
Psyche: Facing a tedious to-do list? This trick could make it easier | by Christian Jarrett
Live Science: James Webb telescope spots thousands of Milky Way lookalikes that 'shouldn't exist' swarming across the early universe | by Ben Turner
Ars Technica: Scientists just opened the lid to NASA’s asteroid sample canister | by Stephen Clark
Washington Post: Perspective | How dream of air conditioning turned into dark future of climate change | by Philip Kennicott
Labor
The Guardian: California’s fast-food workers win fight for $20 hourly pay and industry council | by Michael Sainato
Aeon: What Kant can teach us about work: on the problem with jobs | by Tyler Re, Edited by Sam Haselby
LA Taco: 'The Office' Star Rainn Wilson Brought Jerk Chicken Tacos to the Picket Lines Outside of Paramount Studios | by Lexis-Olivier Ray
LA Times: California workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis | by Emily Alpert Reyes, Cindy Carcamo
NY Times: Why Some Ex-Workers at Bed Bath & Beyond Face 401(k) Losses | by Ann Carrns
Podcast
The Photowalk: #402 - Photographer David Wright The Art of Togetherness
404: Food Delivery Robots Are Feeding Camera Footage to the LAPD, Internal Emails Show | Jason Koehler
BBC Sounds: Ken Loach: The Sequel
Books
Washington Post: The majority of all school book challenges in the 2021-2022 school year came from just 11 people. Meet Jennifer Petersen. | by Hannah Nation
London Review of Books: Defanged: Deifying King | by Eric Toner
Washington Post: Dylan C. Penningroth’s new book illuminates how Black Americans used property ownership, common law and other methods to assert their rights | Review by Matthew F. Delmont
MACK: Jim Goldberg’s extraordinary ‘Coming and Going’ – out now
Social Issues
Near Spitalfields Market. London, England. 25 September 2023. Photo Robert Gumpert
Photo Jesus on a lamb post
NY Times: Child labor and a broken border | by David Leonhardt
Searchlight New Mexico: 'State of chaos': New Mexico’s child welfare crisis is worse, monitors say | by Ed Williams
Arts Professional: Leeds festival: The environmental hangover | by Jack Lowe
The Guardian: San Francisco razed its ‘Harlem of the West’. Detectives seek those who lost homes | by Robin Buller
The Guardian: This racist US housing policy that tried to fix poverty is a massive failure | Alex Moffett-Bateau
The Nation: In Defense of Drug Decriminalization—Yes, in Oregon | by Abdullah Shihipar, Alexandria Macmandu and Brandon D.L. Marshall
Washington Post: Monster wind turbines floating offshore could be future of wind energy | by William Booth
The Philadelphia Inquirer: A MAGA gunman in New Mexico and “the end of politics” in America | by will Bunch
Division Street
Portrait from the book “Division Street”, published by Dewi Lewis. See more of the book including portraits and stories Here
Name: Jula Perez, 42; James Jeffrey Perez Brown, 5 mths; Elijah Perez Brown, 2
Without a home: A long time
Place: Compass Family Services
Date: 18 December 2019
How long without a home? “You know I don’t know. It’s been going on for a long time. That’s a complicated question. I was in the shelter a couple weeks, at the moment I’m in a transitional situation. Right now my apartment has mold in it and it’s not good for the babies. I’m dealing with the issues with my landlord but it’s not safe for them so I’m kind of like surfing couches. You think the situation’s fixed, and they’re just patching over the leaks, but there’s mold in the walls. With the babies that’s the hardest. I can’t get emotional because this little guy sees and hears everything. My disposition is very important to his behavior so I try to keep a straight face as much as I can.”
“Hardest thing is having children. Having to explain to my son certain things, why we have to do things especially like being in a shelter they make you leave at a certain point, the light being on, the sounds … The hardest part is not being comfortable - is not having a place of comfort. It’s very dehumanizing. There’s a stigmatizing to it, especially in this city where people are walking over people lying on the street as they’re on their iPhones. One thing I say to my older son, if someone is just lying in the street you make sure that they’re OK. Here I think that’s kind of forgotten. You walk over people, you don’t know if they’re dead, but you don’t care. You don’t even see them; you have like these blockers on. It’s like that dehumanizing thing (but) we’re all the same. If I was lying on the ground, I would hope somebody would check to see if I’m OK.”
“It’s very difficult because the shelters put you out at a certain time, you have to be in by 5 and out by 7, depending on the day. But when I have children they need a nap, it’s very difficult to find respite on the street.”
“We’re all human, we all go through rough times. I tell my son the world is your home. Not these little boxes, these four walls. For me anywhere I’m at is my home. This is our birthright. This is our inheritance and we all share it. There is no way any of us should be without, with as many resources as we have. The unequal distribution of it has gotten out of control.”
Mother Jones: “I’m Doing the Best I Can”: Stories From California’s Unsheltered Community | Interviews by Aaron Schrank, Photography by Sam Comen
New York/The Cut: When I Was Homeless, I Feared Becoming Invisible | by Kaitlin Byrd
KQED: San Francisco Will Enforce Sit-Lie Laws When People Refuse Shelter | by Sydney Johnson
The New Yorker: A Journey from Homelessness to a Room of One’s Own | by Jennifer Egan
SF Frisc: Amid Noisy SF Homelessness Fights, A Very Quiet Push to Get People Off the Streets | by Alex Lash
See more of my photobook “Division Street”. Or see all the images and read all the stories by buying the book from Dewi Lewis
“Division Street” – Published by Dewi Lewis: Orders: U.S.A – Britain - Canada