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Liquid City

Liquid City

Marc Atkins | Iain Sinclair

(2016)

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Book Details

Abstract

The eccentric, manic, and often moving collaborative explorations of London’s hidden streets, cemeteries, parks, canals, pubs, and personalities by photographer Marc Atkins and writer Iain Sinclair were first recorded in Sinclair’s highly acclaimed 1997 book Lights Out for the Territory, praised in the Guardian as “one of the most remarkable books ever written on London.” Liquid City is a splendid follow-up—presented here in an updated format and with a new introduction and additional images—documenting Atkins and Sinclair’s further peregrinations through the city’s eastern and south-eastern quadrants, famous as London’s grittier but culturally rich quarters.  

An array of famous and lesser-known writers, booksellers, and film-makers slip in and out of Sinclair’s annotations, as do memories and remnants of the East End’s criminal mobs and physical landmarks as diverse as the Thames barrier and Karl Marx’s grave in Archway cemetery. All of it is documented in Atkins’s striking, atmospheric photographs and Sinclair’s impressionistic prose that marries psychology with geography. Cued by the title, readers will follow the Thames as it flows silently through the photographic and textual narrative, traversing a city that is always fluid, full at once of continuities and surprises. 
Marc Atkins is a freelance photographer who has exhibited across Europe and North America and contributed to books and magazines worldwide. Iain Sinclair is the author of many books, including London Overground, Downriver, and London Orbital

Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Hard water, soft stone 9
Elective anonymity 15
On the drift: Walking the tidal Thames 23
A serious of photographs 41
Is this London? 59
Sion ants 85
Watching the watchman 117
Bishop’s Palace, Fulham 144
Hungry ghost 147
Vanishings: The tree that secreted coins 160
Arnold Circus 164
The Roebuck of Durward Street 166
Drif and Martin Stone 168
Where the talent is 178
Re-immigration experienced for the first time 180
Exile 184
The synagogue 186
Kathy Acker & The Falconer 197
Ackroyd and Moorcock 202
stumbling-blocks: London Stone\r 208
The vegetative Bunyan 222
The warehouse on Durward Street 226
Hardy’s tree 228
Fracture: Rodinsky's Mirror\r 232
Gaudy living 238
Whitechapel/New York 242
Tea with the plague warriors 250
The Cardinal and the Corpse 258
Conductors of chaos 260
A provisional past 268