Recently I spent some time with the Benedictine nuns of Tyburn, a mostly silent convent next to Marble Arch in central London. The nuns are always praying, 24 hours a day. They take it in shifts, and can’t leave except to vote or for medical appointments. Day and night, they pray for the souls of the city and beyond, sequestered away from and ignorant to the constant commercial motion around them and the hyperactive processes of development and real estate speculation just past their doorstep.
By the entrance to the convent, ‘there’s a corkboard with little handwritten notes stuck to it. These are the prayers of Londoners — Londoners they will likely never meet. People drop them off at the door and the nuns pin them up to remind themselves of what and who to pray for. Some notes ask for safe passage through surgery, others through depression; one thanks Tyburn for a husband’s successful jigsaw puzzle business.’
Great write-up by @miles.ellingham for @thelondonernewspaper
Some of my work from London over the past few years appears alongside this piece by @billiemuraben in the latest issue of @tankmagazine
Billie’s article addresses the way housing has become increasingly commodified through the idea of ‘lifestyle’ since the mid-70s, beginning with Thatcher’s selling off of the council housing stock to mid 2000’s property TV shows and today’s constant barrage of ‘housing as identity’, by way of lifestyle agents like The Modern House and the fetishisation of the Brutalist aesthetic, whilst totally evacuating it of its motivating political values.
Thank you also to @otomilarcher and @_nell_whittaker_
I went to Felixstowe a few weeks ago to photograph this story for the new issue of @theeconomist on how Britain has become a leading exporter of stolen goods. On the day we visited the port, Adam Gibson, the port’s lone police officer, opened up a shipping container to reveal a Porsche Carrera 911 that had been rented in Germany two weeks before: somehow it had found its way to a container in Britain, bound for Africa.
“For centuries criminals have nicked valuable products and smuggled them across borders, beyond the reach of the law. Britain today shows how this model has evolved in new and alarming ways. Encrypted communications have enabled criminal gangs to operate and co-operate more freely than ever before, and establish global supply chains. As countries in Africa and Asia have become richer, demand for the products common on the streets of the rich world is growing. This combination has spawned a flourishing criminal enterprise. Call it Grand Theft Global Inc.“
Story by Tom Sasse
In the basement of a quiet city-boy bar in the square mile, I photographed a group of dads in studious absorption at a table covered in mannequins and buckets of Lucky Saint beer, as they diligently learnt the correct way to tie a high ponytail for their daughters. The event, named Pints and Ponytails and organised by two co-hosts of a popular podcast about fatherhood, aimed at equipping the fathers attending with the hair styling knowhow that has traditionally fallen to the women in the family.
Seb Brantigan travelled two hours from Suffolk to be there. ‘At the moment I only do (my daughter’s) hair if there’s no other option. She used to only want her mum for everything, but now she’s nearly three and letting me do more and more. Life with her already feels like it’s going so quickly, and I can see (that doing her hair is) another way of spending time with her’. Though most of the fathers here are in the first years of parenthood, there are also those like David Lee, who has been in deep concentration all night. His daughter is 21. ‘I’ve only brushed her hair a few times in her life, I missed out on this’, he says with a shy smile. ‘I want to surprise her with my new skills when she comes home from college’.
Photographed for @financialtimesfashion@ft_weekend for a story by Jessica Salter
More from some night shifts I spent at Babestation, one of the UK’s last adult tv stations. Photographed for a story in @dispatch__media written by Max Jeffery.
“The Last Days of Babestation” for @dispatch__media , story by Max Jeffery
‘Delilah Jynx and Zeena Valvona, dressed as nurses, are harassing one of the Mr Ps by the Babestation common area. “I think we should do a prostate exam!” says Delilah. “Prepare yourself.”
She stretches on some blue vinyl gloves, and she and Zeena fall about laughing. Every Monday, they drive from the south coast to Milton Keynes, and stay for three nights in the studio’s dormitories. While the two models interfere with the producer, Ric fiddles with something that looks like a saddle. Sorry, no. Ric corrects me. “That,” he starts jabbing forward and backwards with his hand, “is a fuck machine.” ‘
I made some pictures for this story in Dispatch for a look inside one of Britain’s last adult TV stations.
Big thank you to all the models and producers for letting me hang out and photograph. Max’s piece is well worth reading for a fun, well written and non-judgemental look at a place that’s something of an anachronism in an age of an extreme online sexual culture.
Bill & Ann ♥️🤍
An excerpt from the latest issue of our fanzine Poison Lasagna.
You can read the full piece by buying a paper copy on eighteen86.com
Photos by @harrymitchell
