The 1001 Days Project is an attempt to celebrate London and its people in an ambitiously grand scale presentation manifesting itself in two distinctly differing formats whilst using the same visual material. 1001 photographs have been selected from an archive of over 120,000 b/w negatives covering 15 years since the start of the Millennium, each image representing one specific day in London.
St George’s Day Festival (23rd April 2012). Courtesy of Steve Hollingshead
What characterises Hollingshead’s work? A glance around this exhibition provides one answer – he works in black and white. He compares himself to a blind football supporter who still goes to the matches ‘for the atmosphere, capturing the excitement’. ‘I’ll try to capture the energy and the atmosphere, and the drama which people who just look at colour pictures might not see.’ No surprise that his first book of photographs was simply called Event (2007).
Out in the real world there is an exhibition showing all 1001 pictures together in a single venue. Meanwhile, here in Cybertown, just one image from the presentation is featured in a daily blog (1001 Days), eventually taking 2.75 years to complete.
Weather Project (
3rd January 2004). Courtesy of Steve Hollingshead
The exhibition of 1001 photographs, which, from its official launch in March 2016, will appear on various occasions at various places and in various forms during the subsequent two & three quarter years, will be presented with no information about any of the images apart from the date the photo was taken. This is partly because it’s often irritating to find yourself in a gallery, only to have your view of the art partially obscured by people dutifully reading the block of information beside it, whether their enjoyment of that particular artwork is enhanced or not. It also looks much neater like this.
The Exhibition
1001 DAYS IN LONDON
Date: 19th – 29th April 2018
Time: 11.00am – 6.00pm daily
Location: gallery@oxo
Address: Oxo Tower Wharf, Bargehouse Street, South Bank, London SE1 9PH
Returning for its second visit to this iconic gallery space located at the heart of London’s South Bank, the presentation has been revised and updated with over 150 new images. Additionally, more than half of the photographs on display have now been uploaded and featured on this website, so interested observers can now discover more about each of these images by keying in the date on the print in the ‘Find Photos by Date Taken’ box located under the Exhibition Calendar area of the site.
1001 Days in London evolved from a previous exhibition concept The London Wall Project which saw presentations of 300 – 400 b/w prints exhibited as a ‘wall’ of images of London and Londoners ‘at play’ in a number of venues around the city in the mid-2000s.
The Challenge
Following a long period of archiving and filtration, the idea of displaying over one thousand images in a single presentation came about in early 2013. The decision to allow just one picture for each chosen day created a number of selection dilemmas. Then, almost a year into the project, the realization that the overall presentation would work better if all the images were the same format meant a re-evaluation of the selected images and further delays.
Eventually all of the final 1001 selected negatives were scanned, retouched & cropped. They were then randomly arranged into groups of 20 to be output as high quality inkjets and mounted onto PVC board.
Hearse and poster (16th June 2000). Courtesy of Steve Hollingshead
Attempting to present such a large number of images in a public venue was always going to be a logistical challenge, especially when trying to keep costs manageable. The aim with this project is to have the entire 1001 pictures on display (if possible with accompanying projected slideshow version) at a number of different locations (hopefully at least twice a year) during the three years the blogging aspect of the project developed.
Own a piece of the Project: Click Here
Santacon (15th December 2007). Courtesy of Steve Hollingshead
The Artist
Steve Hollingshead (b.Dover 1958) studied Graphic Design at Middlesex Polytechnic. He has lived and worked in London for over 30 years and has been photographing the capital for almost 20 of them, being particularly inspired by the dynamics of multi-cultural street-life and focusing on the positive aspects of urban living.
“You’re not looking at it as it is, you’re looking at it in terms of the light, and the shade and the shapes. You are always told not to shoot into the light, but a lot of the time I deliberately shoot into the light just to get a more dramatic light and shade feel. When you lose the colour element of a photograph it’s the other bits that then become more important – the drama, the emotion, the light and shade, and the texture.”
Vaisakhi procession (23rd April 2006). Courtesy of Steve Hollingshead
Still working with b/w film, Hollingshead has spent much of the past 4 years scanning, editing and archiving over 120,000 images. Out of this endeavour has emerged the inspiration for the 1001 days in London project. Hollingshead has exhibited extensively since 1999 and began work on his ambitious London Wall Project in 2004 resulting in 3 major solo exhibitions over the following 3 years with exhibitions at the Spitz Gallery, City Hall and Guys and Westminster hospitals.
In September 2005, as part of the Mayor’s Thames Festival, 150 of his images celebrating the river were projected onto the facade of the National Theatre on the South Bank. In 2005 and 2006 large format images of the Thames were displayed on the Riverside Walk between London Eye and Tower Bridge for the month leading up to the festival.
Africa ‘Roots and Shoots’ Festival (12th March 2000). Courtesy of Steve Hollingshead
In 2012 a 40-minute commissioned projected display celebrating the capital Around the City in 80 festivals (with music composed by the magnificently dapper Momo:tempo, whose edited version 80 Bells was created as a video Christmas Card) was shown on the large screen at Potters Fields Park during the London Olympics and Paralympics.
For more Information on 1001 Days in London
Website: 1001 Days in London
Visit the Facebook Page to stay up to date
Twitter: @1001London
Email: info@1001days.london
For more biographical information & some stunning photography from Steve Hollingshead visit takingthepics.com
