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About City of London

The ceaseless sprawl of today's large cities answers to a financial and market logic that benefits those who have the most, defends those with most ambition and elevates those with fewest scruples. Little heed is paid now to the basic principles of the neo-liberal creed formulated by Alexander Rüstow,  who envisaged a 'social market economy in which the state would provide free public education, introduce temporary wage subsidies and impose compulsory unemployment insurance',  and would 'regulate unbridled business growth and combat inequality through the imposition of inheritance tax', in order to achieve 'a living situation that was as satisfying as possible.'¹ Rather, the new brand of neo-liberalism has taken it upon itself to negate and dismantle such principles to such an extent as to turn them into the very antithesis of that vision.

If there is one thing culture must strive for, it is to preserve the meaning of terms and words, to prevent them – as Marie José Mondzain puts it – from being 'confiscated', alongside images and time.² It is precisely for that reason that contemporary visual art needs to draw attention to those frictions that are preventing it from developing normally, or, even worse, that are furthering an impeded development, subrogated to and dependent upon economic power as an established and assumed regulatory norm. Granted, culture is an industry, and as such it impacts and nourishes all those who are involved in it. However, that does not mean that we should take for granted that it is also a business, established by a minority who seek to exploit the weakness of culture itself, with its principles of public service and shared generosity. In her 2014 acceptance speech to the National Book Foundation on being awarded the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, author Ursula K. Le Guin said: 'We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art'.

This idea forms the starting point for Alejandro S. Garrido's City of London (2018-2019). The series is made up of twenty-eight black and white documentary-type photos of different scenes around the City of London. The pictures are clear, descriptive and apparently simple. Everything in them appears to be taking place normally. Indeed, there is no reason to think otherwise. The pictures show the urban and architectural transformation of twentieth-century London, standing alongside the edifices of previous centuries. And yet the proportions are out of control. The progressive expansion of London stands in contrast to the existing array of low-built private homes, a few large town houses, some churches and other constructions just a few storeys high; the spread is not confined to horizontal growth and infill; it is predominantly upward. Steel and glass skyscrapers rise triumphantly above all else, epitomising what Byung-Chul Han has called 'polished cities'³, those new societies that 'offer no resistance'. Indeed they far surpass the long-held unwritten limit whereby no building was allowed to exceed the height of St. Paul's Cathedral.

The title of each work identifies the exact location of the shot, together with details of each building, including its name, the company or institution it represents, its nickname (The Cheesegrater, Can of Ham, The Gherkin, etc.), the architect and the year of construction. The information helps to explain the City of London's historical importance as a financial zone over the centuries. It also documents its frenetic expansion with the construction of new skyscrapers since the beginning of the twenty-first century, many of which were still being built when the photos were taken in 2018-2019. In other words, it shows the way London has gone from being the capital of an expanded British Empire to a self-contained globalised empire and the conflicts this situation has created, especially with regard to the most sensitive aspect of the whole process: access to housing for local citizens.

The scenes depict a strange naturalness. The passers-by, the people walking or riding different forms of transport through the streets, all appear to be posing; it is as if they were taken from a film set, akin to Jeff Wall's constructed images or some ghostly variant of the Parisians immortalized by Atget. However, one can see that this natural form of acting is something as simple and, at the same time, as complex as life itself, passing incessantly before our eyes. All we need to do is pay a little attention – as Alejandro S. Garrido does with his attentive gaze – to turn it into an extraordinary event.

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1. Ebeling, Richard M. (2021). ‘El Neoliberalismo Nunca Estuvo Relacionado con el Libre Mercado’. Fundación Internacional Bases. Retrieved 14 January 2025.)
2. Mondzain, Marie José. (2023). Confiscación. De las palabras, de las imágenes y del tiempo. Pre-Textos.
3. Han, Byung-Chul. (2015). La salvación de lo bello. [Saving Beauty] Herder.

30 St Mary Axe (‘The Gherkin’, Foster + Partners, 2003), seen from Mark Lane looking towards Fenchurch Street.

Christopher Street and Clifton Street through Crown Place to Sun Street. From left to right: Finsbury Market Substation, 30 Crown Place (Pinsent Masons HQ, Horden Cherry Lee, HCL Architects, 2009), 10 Crown Place (MacCormac Jamieson Prichard, MJP Architects, 1999), and 5 Broadgate (UBS HQ, Make Architects, 2015).