A Snap from London

(click for larger size)

As a Friday afternoon break from the usual, I thought I’d share a photo I snapped during my week in London at the end of June/beginning of July. I don’t in any way, shape, or form consider myself a photographer, but I do love the medium (as any Bag reader would know); my wife, and my son who still lives at home, had just gotten me a “real” camera to replace my old and near-broken down point-and-shoot; and I was fascinated how London seemed like an ethnic and racial melting pot, with a keen interest (especially in the art and theater going on) in race.

I took this picture at the Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane while graduate students were setting up what looked like an enormous thesis show. (I found this link.) I just wandered in off the street, feeling completely at home from my years as a shrink at a college of art and an architecture school here in L.A..

Unfortunately, I don’t know the name of the student who took these photos, but I was really struck by the portraiture, in the tension and the balance — which I could feel in the city — between similarity and difference.