34 candid photos of London life from Chris JL

‘I grew up in many places, mostly "old Europe,” and spent a big part of my adult life on the other side of the pond. I’m a foreigner, and I’ve been one always and everywhere, but London is the place that I’ve chosen to call home. I live in the centre of town, where social strata, ethnicities, and nationalities mix.’

‘I walk a lot. I shoot people. I shoot unposed – candid – images. Simple things. For the ones that like labels, a big part of what I shoot is street photography. For me, it is just photography, and photography is just a part of my life – like eating, drinking, and sleeping.’

‘The truth is that I'm a compulsive photographer. Some people keep a journal, other write stories or draw sketches – the camera is simply my sketchbook, personal journal, and way of telling stories.’

‘I used to do quite a bit of commercial photography, but nowadays I do something else for a living (that I love), hence I only shoot for myself or for a good cause.’

’At the age of five, I was very disappointed to discover that I would not be allowed to bring my inseparable camera with me on my first day of school. But I was stubborn, so the following compromise was reached: I would bring my camera up to the school gate, where I would be allowed to take a snap of myself in front of the school (that was a day worth remembering, I thought), and I would then willingly relinquish my camera for the rest of the school day.’

‘Thirty seven years after, only two things haven’t changed in my life: I’m still in school (I’m a scientist), and I still carry a camera everywhere.’

’I let a lot of time pass between shooting and editing. When shooting I’m typically in the image, often both physically and emotionally. There is very little detachment at that stage, and often even an emotional link, and that tends to blur the editing (aka mostly ditching) judgement. Time alleviates that: if I still like a picture that I forgot taking, there might be something worth in it.’

‘Shoreditch is home, by choice, and I love it. The familiarity - living there - is an important element to be able to shoot in the streets the type of images I’m after.’

‘The camera is a mean to an end. I mingle with the flow, so ideally the gear should be sufficiently unobtrusive for both me and the others. But at the same time, I won’t hide in the bushes and shoot from afar, hence I tend to shoot with very short lenses.’

‘Street photography is instead, by its own nature, un-normalised and anarchic – or at least, that’s how I like it to be. In a sense, it’s the world in your face.’

‘For the last decade, in a typical year I spend time (mostly for work) in between one or two dozen major cities of the world, but only in a handful I can really take pictures - in the other ones, sometimes after years, I still have too much the eye of a tourist.’