{"id":16977,"date":"2016-04-06T10:00:23","date_gmt":"2016-04-06T09:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/?p=16977"},"modified":"2016-04-06T00:19:01","modified_gmt":"2016-04-05T23:19:01","slug":"londons-south-bank-in-the-april-sun-1001-photos-luxury-flats-and-a-tennis-racket-acrobat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/londons-south-bank-in-the-april-sun-1001-photos-luxury-flats-and-a-tennis-racket-acrobat\/","title":{"rendered":"London&#8217;s South Bank in the April sun: 1001 photos, luxury flats and a tennis racket acrobat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/southbank-april-2016-01.jpg\" alt=\"London's South Bank in the April sun: 1001 photos, luxury flats and a tennis racket acrobat, April 2016\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Yesterday was a glorious April afternoon, with the Thames glistening in the sunlight and plenty of people enjoying the entertainment by the river.<\/p>\n<p>I took a stroll along the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/South_Bank\" target=\"_blank\">South Bank<\/a> and grabbed a few photos with my camera phone (too late, I realised that the batteries in my favoured Ricoh GR were totally flat).<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/southbank-april-2016-02.jpg\" alt=\"London's South Bank in the April sun: 1001 photos, luxury flats and a tennis racket acrobat, April 2016\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Coming out of Waterloo station, I was greeted by the sight of yet another central London luxury development for the rich, going under the name of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.southbank-place.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Southbank Place<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Apartments start at \u00a3750,000 and go right up to \u00a34m, with the ghastly slabs of faceless glass and brick being developed by the\u00a0Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company and\u00a0Canary Wharf Group plc.<\/p>\n<p>Naturally, there is not\u00a0even the slightest whiff of social or affordable housing to be found in this foreign investor&#8217;s paradise. So depressing.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/southbank-april-2016-03.jpg\" alt=\"London's South Bank in the April sun: 1001 photos, luxury flats and a tennis racket acrobat, April 2016\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Things looked up once I got to the Festival Hall, which still has plenty of public space\u00a0for &#8216;normal people&#8217; to use.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/southbank-april-2016-04.jpg\" alt=\"London's South Bank in the April sun: 1001 photos, luxury flats and a tennis racket acrobat, April 2016\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/southbank-april-2016-05.jpg\" alt=\"London's South Bank in the April sun: 1001 photos, luxury flats and a tennis racket acrobat, April 2016\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Looking out to the City from Hungerford Bridge.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/southbank-april-2016-06.jpg\" alt=\"London's South Bank in the April sun: 1001 photos, luxury flats and a tennis racket acrobat, April 2016\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Shadows and park bench.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/southbank-april-2016-07.jpg\" alt=\"London's South Bank in the April sun: 1001 photos, luxury flats and a tennis racket acrobat, April 2016\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Running until the 10th April,\u00a0this exhibition\/installation in the OXO Tower features over 1000 black &amp; white photographs by Steve Hollingshead, all taken since the start of the Millennium.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/southbank-april-2016-08.jpg\" alt=\"London's South Bank in the April sun: 1001 photos, luxury flats and a tennis racket acrobat, April 2016\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0photographs had been selected from an archive of over 120,000 b\/w negatives covering 15 years, with each image representing one specific day.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/southbank-april-2016-09.jpg\" alt=\"London's South Bank in the April sun: 1001 photos, luxury flats and a tennis racket acrobat, April 2016\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Although there&#8217;s some excellent photos to be found, I found the sheer bulk of the collection somewhat overwhelming.<\/p>\n<p>With no central theme running through the photos or any explanatory captions &#8211; and all of them being the same size\u00a0&#8211;\u00a0it felt a bit like flicking through random photo books and failed to keep my attention for too long.<\/p>\n<p>Less is more!<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/southbank-april-2016-10.jpg\" alt=\"London's South Bank in the April sun: 1001 photos, luxury flats and a tennis racket acrobat, April 2016\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s\u00a0always street theatre taking place by the Thames, and this guy pulled a big crowd with his rather amazing ability to get his body through a tennis racket.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/southbank-april-2016-11.jpg\" alt=\"London's South Bank in the April sun: 1001 photos, luxury flats and a tennis racket acrobat, April 2016\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A young volunteer was invited from the crowd and he got into proceedings with some gusto.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/southbank-april-2016-12.jpg\" alt=\"London's South Bank in the April sun: 1001 photos, luxury flats and a tennis racket acrobat, April 2016\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/?s=southbank\" target=\"_blank\">See more South Bank photos here<\/a><\/p>\n<p>[<em>Photos taken on Sony z3 Xperia Compact<\/em>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday was a glorious April afternoon, with the Thames glistening in the sunlight and plenty of people enjoying the entertainment by the river. I took a stroll along the\u00a0South Bank &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16980,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[194,17,193],"tags":[1367,10,1195,533,699,139,1368,48],"class_list":["post-16977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-london-features","category-photos","category-places","tag-1001-days-in-london","tag-london","tag-photos","tag-river-thames","tag-south-bank","tag-southbank","tag-street-entertainer","tag-thames"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/southbank-april-2016-01-1.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQI7P-4pP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16977"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16985,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16977\/revisions\/16985"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}