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We sell signed, editioned prints, all printed by Mike Seaborne. Above is a selection from his series ‘Facades’ in an edition of 10. Prices range from £495 to £990 (in archival mount, 20 x 16 inches). Please ask to see more prints from this and other series.
Mike Seaborne has spent 40 years photographing London, capturing the transition and development across the capital during that time of rapid change . He began photographing the city in 1979 after having been appointed Curator of the Historic Photographs Collection at the Museum of London and during the 1980s he worked on a series of documentary photographs of the Isle of Dogs both before and during its redevelopment. This series was published by Hoxton Mini Press in 2018 - ‘The Isle of Dogs Before the Big Money’ – and is the second book in their ‘Vintage Britain’ series.
In 1986 he began a long-term urban landscape project recording de-industrialisation, changing patterns of land use and new city infrastructures in London. Using medium and large-format cameras to carefully reveal the minutiae of his subjects, Seaborne has produced a powerful body of work on London, showing many locations that are now unrecognizable. Although now embracing both colour and digital technology, his work has obvious links with that of earlier photographers.
Seaborne began the series Facades in 2004 photographing what he refers to as the ‘zone of transition’ in inner city London where the urban fabric reflects the constantly shifting population. In this series he focuses on the south and east of the city where run-down residential, commercial and industrial buildings, often built during the Victorian period or earlier, were relatively cheap to rent and buy and therefore attractive to the less well-off such as the young, economic migrants and new businesses. In time this leads to gentrification or ethnic concentration and some areas become trendy places to live while others remain ‘un-regenerated’. These are the buildings that Seaborne concentrated on, the derelict and untransformed that were ‘For Sale’ or ‘To Let’ awaiting change.
Since retiring from the Museum of London in 2012 Seaborne has focused on London’s periphery, including a project on the changing landscape of the Thames Estuary, begun in 2009, and an examination of the long-term environmental consequences of the construction of ‘temporary’ airfields in Essex during World War Two. He has also recently begun a series on the threat to London’s green belt posed by new large-scale housing schemes.
Seaborne’s work has been included in numerous exhibitions including ‘London Nights’, a major exhibition at the Museum of London in 2018, and in a variety of books and other publications. In 1999 he was nominated for the Citibank Photography Award and his work is held in private and public collections including the Museum of London; the National Buildings Record; the British Architectural Library; Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives and the East End Archive at London Metropolitan University.
For further information on this and other recent series of photographs by Mike Seaborne see: mikeseaborne.co.uk and urbanlandscape.org.uk/seaborne.htm
Images © Mike Seaborne