London’s Square Mile — a secret city
Photographs by Polly Braden, text by David Kynaston
(Hoxton Mini Press, 2019 £17.95)

In his Introduction to this collection of photographs by Polly Braden, the historian David Kynaston says laconically: “The modern City has become a self-perpetuating, absurdly over-rewarded island, too much cut off from the rest of Britain.”

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Her often understated snapshots capture the men and women going about their business in this jungle of steel, concrete and glass. It is in this tiny, exclusive enclave that the economic fate of our country is largely determined.

Kynaston also provides succinct and insightful commentaries alongside the images which give the historical context, a commentary on the architecture and on the City’s changing face from its early days as a national banking and trade quarter to become a global powerhouse. They provide an appropriate textual setting for Braden’s visual narrative.

Once dominated by the splendid St Paul’s cathedral — its spiritual heart — that iconic edifice is now surrounded and obscured by huge carbuncles — the gherkin, the shard, the cheese-grater, the walkie-talkie, the strata, all monuments to the glory of mammon.

The Square Mile or London’s “City” is indeed a peculiar anomaly, like our own Vatican city within the metropolis, with its own mayor, attendant rituals and archaic uniformed Swiss Guards.

The Lord mayor in his gilded coach, guarded by red-robed guardsmen, with plumed steel helmets and breastplates, toting long lances, is set against a backdrop of brutalist edifices, as if two images from different centuries had been pasted together.

Braden captures all this and more in a symphony of tonal contrasts, patterned shadows cast by the buildings, people dwarfed by their surroundings. Even though she photographs in colour, most of the time you have the feeling you are looking at black and white images, with the odd blotch of colour accidentally included.

The photos capture mainly solitary figures caught momentarily by slivers of light in the maze of high-rise buildings or mounting monumental stairways. Scarce any greenery is to be seen, just broad facades of shadowed brick, concrete and marble, broken here and there by streaks of sunlight, creating unworldly patterns.

Braden also includes contrasting images of the G20 summit protest and Margaret Thatcher’s cortege as it passes through this heartland that, as prime minister, she so ruthlessly represented.

Braden also captures a poignant moment during the financial crash: a female broker carrying an armful of files, dwarfed by a huge steel sculpture, that hovers over her like a huge shark’s jaws.

Another metaphorical image contrast: ornamental bird cages hanging in a window opposite shots of banking employees cooped in transparent glass lifts, taking them to their offices. These images are captioned appropriately as the “gilded cage.”

This is another excellent book in their series Tales from the City by Hoxton Mini Press that can always be relied upon to offer visually stimulating and pertinent commentaries on modern Britain.