Love London transport? Join us in the Londonist Roundel Ramblings Facebook group for a spot of geeky fun.
"I decided to take a photograph every time the bus I was on stopped for the driver to swap with a colleague." Liberty Rowley's art project captures something many commuters see day in, day out, yet rarely, if ever, record.
This photo essay the former Camberwell College of Art student created — photographed at south east London stops including Peckham and New Cross — documents the often frustrating wait for passengers, while one bus driver alights, and their counterpart gets on.
(We've changed buses at these stops, and trust us, often there's plenty of time to get a photo... or indeed a photo essay.)
"During the couple of years I’ve been doing this, the automated announcement changed from 'The bus will wait a short time for a change of Drivers to take place' to 'The bus will wait here whilst the Drivers change over,'" says Rowley.
The images are currently going on display one at a time, at Rowley's self-created own 'art gallery', The London Arts Board, a disused municipal noticeboard on the corner of Peckham Road and Vestry Road in Camberwell.
The images have also been turned into a book, The bus will wait a short time for a change of Drivers to take place — available to buy for £16.99.
Though some of the images — shuttered shops, rain-spattered panes, crafty pre-bus cigs — might be branded 'mundane', we can say from personal experience, the photos do freeze certain commutes and journeys in time, allowing us for once to study scenes we pass regularly, but rarely register.
Rowley would go further than that, saying her work can be defined as 'microgeography', a branch of psychogeography concerned with looking at small or confined landscapes.
You can see Rowley's photo essay on display 24 hours a day, seven days a week at The London Arts Board from 16 December 2018 to 13 January 2019.
