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The Project

London is truly an extraordinary place and what perhaps makes it most extraordinary is the people who have been drawn here and who have made their homes in the capital: they have brought with them the most amazing diversity of traditions, cultures and habits, of faiths, expectations and hopes, and these are reflected in the appearance of each and every one.

100 Faces of London features portraits of one hundred of these Londoners, reflecting the huge diversity of people who make up this great city of ours. All photographed within a twelve-month period, mostly during 2010, the youngest sitter was 20 years old and the oldest 100, with every effort made to embrace a broad range of ethnic backgrounds.

From the very outset, the aim was to invite only ‘ordinary Londoners’ to join the project (ie those Londoners who were not famous, who were not familiar personalities or household names, not leading politicians, nor stars of stage and screen, all of whose faces would already have been completely familiar to the public at large, with everyone having seen them endlessly photographed and their images routinely displayed in the public domain). However, once the photography was completed, it was evident that not a single one of the sitters, any one of whom might have been seen in the streets of the capital, in its parks, cinemas, concert halls or theatre foyers, could have been accurately described as being an ordinary Londoner; they have all proved to be quite extraordinary people, with remarkable personalities, and it is perhaps inevitable that a number of them do have significant profiles in the life of the capital.

It must also be emphasised that this was an artistic, not a commercial project. To secure his 100 remarkable sitters, the photographer approached around 700 Londoners altogether (people whose faces he saw as striking in some regard) and, following a brief outline of the project, those who lived within the M25 were handed an envelope containing further information and an invitation to sit for a portrait. Around one in ten responded positively and these were joined by another group of sitters identified through various networks, suggested by fellow sitters, or put forward via those organisations who were invited to identify the ‘uniformed sitters’. Nevertheless, all the sitters were volunteers and kindly agreed to travel to a temporary studio in Chiswick, where they were photographed just as they were, or as they wished to present themselves. Clothing, hairstyle, make-up, and jewellery were left entirely at the discretion of the sitter, with the least possible influence from the photographer. The sittings often took several hours and the portraits were deliberately formal, designed to reveal the character and spirit of those who so richly illustrated the astonishing and delightful diversity which was the underlying inspiration for the project.

The project culminated in a major, public exhibition: 100 Faces of London was shown for five weeks at The Gallery in the Crypt, St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London, from 11th June to 14th July 2012, where it was seen by thousands of Londoners and visitors to the capital.

Heritage Book

In addition to this exhibition, an extraordinary, large-format ‘Heritage Book’, of archival quality, was also produced. Larger than A2 in size (450x620mm or 17x25 inches) the volume was beautifully bound for longevity by a firm of specialist bookbinders. In its own protective ‘library case’ and with 110 pages, including high-quality prints of all 100 portraits, the tome weighs a hefty 20 kg, or around 44 lbs. Only two copies were produced: the photographer has retained one; the other was presented as a gift from the photographer and from his sitters to the great city that they had all made their home.

Every page of these two magnificent volumes received the photographer’s personal attention and the highest quality of output was successfully maintained for each individual portrait printed. The photographer’s partner, Gerald Stuart Burnett, looked after the introductory pages and kept an eye on the accuracy of all the other text.

The gift of the ‘100 Faces of London’ Heritage Book was graciously accepted by the British Library at St Pancras and it is now lodged within the photographic collections there, where it will be retained for posterity - British Library Shelfmark: Photo 1249.

The Book itself was officially presented to the Library’s Lead Curator for Visual Arts, Mr John Falconer, during the exhibition’s official opening ceremony on 12th June 2012. Amongst other things, Mr Falconer made the following observations in his acceptance speech:

“It is a very great pleasure to accept this wonderful photographic tribute to the cultural and ethnic diversity of London for the permanent photographic collections of the British Library. The strengths of the Library’s photographic collections are most firmly rooted in the 19th century and I did initially wonder how such an acquisition would fit with our existing holdings. But the title, 100 Faces of London, reminded me of a distinguished photographic forebear in our collections. In the mid-1840s, in the formative first decade of photography, two Edinburgh photographers, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, produced a (similarly massive!) volume of portraits of the inhabitants of Edinburgh, entitled One Hundred Calotype Sketches, generally considered one of the finest achievements of early photography.

“This fortuitous coincidence of both title and subject matter underlines the continuity of photography’s engagement with human experience and the medium’s unique ability to capture the historical moment in the fascinating variety of human expression. These two works speak to each other across a period of over a century and a half and the preservation of Milan Svanderlik’s monumental work in the British Library is both appropriate and gratefully welcomed.“