Metropole

May 18, 2023

Once the Metropole or mother city at the heart of a vast global empire, London is now the dominion to a new world power. Subject to the flows of global finance and whims of markets, the city has become little more than an investment opportunity for multinational developers and overseas investors. Metropole records the brutally disorientating effects of this by documenting these legions of new corporate and residential blocks as they are constructed and occupied.

Recent Stories

Holidays — The Wait
Floriana Avellino captures the joy of going on a holiday and its little, often unnoticed moments in her project The Wait. The body of work focuses in particular on the moments before departure, which are often ignored as the main part of the “real” holiday tends to be what interests most.
Floriana Avellino
Black Eyed Dog
The author opens up about his own struggles with Black Eyed Dog — A Photographic Healing Process. It was born out of a breakdown, a complete shutdown of his nervous system which made him find himself in a dark, gloomy place, one which he has never visited before.
Benedict Stenning
While I Was Sleeping
While I Was Sleeping is the third part of a trilogy of projects that came out of that shift (the other two being After the Fact and Endless Plain). These projects, by and large, use documentary techniques and the resulting images look like documentary photographs, but they are not intended to document an event.
Tony Fouhse
Antiques of the Future
The body of work investigates the relationship between collectors and their possessions; exploring how ordinary, commonplace objects become extraordinary through the often-obsessive act of collecting.
Callum O'Keefe
Fire Corps
The concept (and practice) of voluntary work brings out the best of people. Volunteers not only don’t get paid, they also give their time, passion and effort to a cause that they believe is worth fighting for. Johan Brooks presents us with the story of the Fire Corps — groups
Johan Brooks
Separation
The European Union, or the Council of Europe as it was known when it was founded in 1949, brought in tremendous change to society permeating its very core. The benefits were of economic, cultural and security nature but some also argued that it erased their national identity. One of the biggest improvements, though, was that one could travel, live and study in a place different from one’s birth country unhindered — it has never been this easy to meet, fall in love with and settle in with people
Laura Pannack
Metropole
Once the Metropole or mother city at the heart of a vast global empire, London is now the dominion to a new world power. Subject to the flows of global finance and whims of markets, the city has become little more than an investment opportunity for multinational developers and overseas investors. Metropole records the brutally disorientating effects of this by documenting these legions of new corporate and residential blocks as they are constructed and occupied.
Lewis Bush
Branches of a Tree in Winter
Zak Dimitrov moved to London in 2015 and by 2018 he had been on over 100 dates. The man he was going out with at the time, Reggie, turned out to be, as cliche as it sounds, his photographic muse, partially caused by practicalities as he had very little spare time, all of which was spent with Reggie, and he had to take pictures for his final MA project.
Zak Dimirtov
Dirt Road
The story covers the famous Camino de Santiago de Compostela network of pilgrims’ ways that lead to the shrine of St. James the Great in Northern Spain. It’s a personal account of the photographer’s journey which lasted over 1000km throughout the spiritual passage.
Isaac Kirby
"The situation is fucked up, but people are fucking great!"
Kharkiv, Ukraine on the first day of Russian invasion
Pavel Dorogoy

mnngful Originals

mnngful Members

James Hopkirk
UK
,
London

Documentary photographer, journalist. Began his career as a local newspaper reporter in Kent before moving to The Sunday Times and ITV. Spent six years as Editor of IdeasTap, a charity that helped young people to build careers in the arts and media. As a freelance writer and photographer James worked on stories in Afghanistan, Benin, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, India, Rwanda, Somalia and Uganda.

Stefanos Kouratzis
CY
,
Nicosia

Multidisciplinary photographer living and working in Cyprus since 2000. At the age of 13, he develops a strong interest in Photography when he was handed a Kodak Instamatic. He loved so much the way that light was captured on film that he decided he wants to be a photographer. Due to developing and printing costs, he starts drawing rough sketches, prior shooting, and experimenting with different medium sizes, cameras and techniques. His works can be found in books and private collections in Cyprus, Greece, Spain and Brazil.

Nikita Ghate
UK
,
London

I’m a London based Architect turned photographer. My work, although not limited to, tends to heavily explore ‘place attachment’ between people and the built/un-built environment around them. I like to deeply observe and capture the brilliance of everyday life, that we sometimes tend to oversee.

Lewis Bush
UK
,

Photographer, educator and curator working across media and platforms to visualise the activities of powerful organisations, practices, and technologies. Since 2012 his practice has explored issues ranging from the aggressive redevelopment of London, to the systemic inequalities of the art world. Recent works include Shadows of the State, which examines the democratic deficit of intelligence gathering, and Wv.B which examines the dark histories of space exploration. He is currently working on a long-term project about computer vision which runs in parallel with an ESRC funded PhD at the London School of Economics. He is also course leader of the MA Photojournalism and Documentary Photography (online) course at London College of Communication.

Callum O'Keefe
UK
,
Bristol

Documentary photographer focused on the relation between people and place. Building the base of my portfolio on live music, he has recently graduated with a First Class Honours in Photography from The University West of England.

Ardelle Schneider
DE
,
Düsseldorf

Photographer based in Düsseldorf, Germany, born and raised in Hanover. Schneider is studying photography for a master's degree at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. In 2020 she completed her bachelor's degree in communication design at the Peter Behrens School of Arts (HSD/PSBA) in Düsseldorf. Her work "Familystories" can be seen in the group exhibition "Stopover" at Museum Folkwang (Essen, Germany) until February 6th.

Alex Micu
UK
,
London

London-based, Romanian-born photographer working in the documentary and reportage space. With an honest, raw and often timid approach, Alex creates images for both editorial and commercial clients. His work was published in Evening Standard, Portrait of Humanity, Rankin's 2020, Cheese Magazine and Postall.

Benedict Stenning
FR
,

Documentary photographer whose work is primarily concerned with investigating peoples experiences with their proximal surroundings. Benedict is interested in the relationships we as human beings form with our environs and each other while seeking to subvert perspectives; identifying and capturing liminal spaces to form narratives and provoke an emotional response. Benedict was brought up with the arts from a young age and has an innate appreciation for the powers of story telling. His grandfather, Moran Caplat CBE, was General Manager at Glyndebourne opera house in the Sussex countryside for over 30 years and his father was a stage manager at the BBC and later an associate producer in film.

Sabrina Jeblaoui
DE
,
Berlin

Documentary and street portrait photographer based in Berlin. Started discovering the role electronic and techno music played within the party scene in Berlin since she moved there in 2017 and has decided to take photographs of people in front of clubs. NachtClubsBerlin is Sabrina’s first complete photo project. It gathered more than 28K followers on its Instagram account and caught the attention of several magazines, newspapers, as well as TV channels such as ZDF MorgenMagazin, Tagesspiegel, Ze.tt, Mix Mag, Vice, and more.

Stewart Weir
UK
,

"I began my journey into the world of photography aged 15 when I received a Pentax ME Super camera from my father for Christmas. I was hooked but drifted away from photography after leaving school. I returned to photography in 1993 after being uninspired by having a ‘normal’ job. I'm self taught and have an attitude of ‘just do it’ regardless of people saying you can't. Over my career I've shot most genres of photography from sport to documentary, portraits, weddings, travel, news, magazine and conflict. I've produced several long term stories ranging from 2 to 10 years."

Paco Poyato
ES
,

Visual artist with interest in issues related to the current consumer society and globalization. His aim being reflecting how these two concepts alter his closest reality, understanding globalization as the loss of the individual’s identity, in favor of a model that responds to criteria closely linked to the control of power and banality. To date, his work specializes in delving into the reality of different human groups that are created around a common cause that identifies them as such. A vision characterized by photographing human collectives that have shared common experiences that, in some way, serve to build, mark and also define the individual identity of its members.

Sean McDonnell
UK
,
Londoon

I've been practising street photography since the 1980s. A south Londoner by birth pre-occupied with the West End in black and white on film. Lockdown was an epiphany for me. I started documenting my neighbourhood to raise money for food banks with books and working with local community groups.

Nathan Benkemoun
FR
,
Montreuil

Nathan Benkemoun (1983) is a French photographer born in Nice and based in Montreuil (France). In his work, he tries to illustrate how people interact with environment such as nature, cities or open spaces. He also works in making concrete some common human feelings and sensations.

Onur Tatar
TR
,
Çanakkale

Photographer based in Turkey, was born in 1984 in Canakkale. In 2008, he graduated from the Department of Photography of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Dokuz Eylul University (DEU) and with a Master of Arts degree at the DEU Institute of Fine Arts Department of Photography in 2021. Onur completed his PhD in Ege University Social Sciences Institute Radio Television and Film Department in which his thesis Hypertext and the Changing Aesthetics in Photographic Art. He works as an associate professor at the Adnan Menderes University Radio and Television Department, teaches photography and aesthetics. His artistic works have been exhibited in many solo and group exhibitions.

Shervine Nafissi
CH
,
Lausanne

Self-taught photographer with a passion for sports and politics. Based in Lausanne (CH). Swiss of Iranian origin. In his thirties. Young father. Also Doctor in law.

Stories worth seeing

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