A new photography project has taken a look into the cultural life of the City of London.
Photographer Emile Holba went behind-the-scenes in London’s Square Mile – before the pandemic – to showcase the area’s everyday creativity for The Hidden City.
He visited organisations from the Barbican, London Symphony Orchestra and Guildhall School of Music and Drama to the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers and the Barts Pathology Museum, shooting secret gardens, dressing rooms, concert halls and the people who bring them alive.
A series of pictures reveals the underground of the West Smithfield Market, which will become home to the Museum of London in 2024. One of these photographs shows the Smithfield Woman, a skeleton of a young Roman buried there more than 1,700 years ago.
Holba was given exclusive access to the Charterhouse’s Great Chamber the day before it closed for renovation in another set of pictures. The former monastery, which now serves as an almshouse for the elderly, was where Elizabeth I held her first Privy Council. The picture includes a group of its residents, including two female members who were admitted in 2018, when the men-only rule in place since 1611 was overturned.
Have a look through our gallery to see some of the photographs in the series, and visit culturemile.london for the full online exhibition.
