Showing Mind the Gap by Simon James

How many times have we heard the over-familiar words that give Simon James the title for his wonderful book of startling photographs? Mind the Gap, Michael Palin reminds us in his foreword, is also testimony to what the French philosopher Derrida would probably call a trace, an admission of error written into the very being of the tube. "Mind the Gap" means the trains don't quite fit the stations. Londoners, and all London's visitors, know the tube is synonymous with travelling the capital but is it merely a utilitarian thing that gets us from A to B, from home to work and hopefully back again? Simon James thinks not. He has paid a visit to every one of the tube's multi-fold stops and produced a book of beautiful, strangely haunting and empty, bright and colourful yet oddly nostalgic and gently melancholic photographs that entirely fulfil the photographers remit of making us look anew at the familiar and seeing it again for the first time through renewed eyes. James knows that if we look closely the tube does not actually quite fit our expectations of it, doesn't quite fit the image we have in our minds. He shows us history (surreally capturing a sign for a "Secret Nuclear Bunker") and often impressive architecture, suburban hinterlands and the proximity of the countryside (surely in most minds the tube's radical "other"), and reminisces about offices, platforms, walkways and cuttings. This is the tube as you've never thought you've seen it before. --Mark Thwaite