the (un)divided city
The (Un)divided City is a contemporary documentary series that examines the fault lines etched into the modern metropolis. It is a study of division — the kind that fractures cities not just through class, race, and identity, but through silence, routine, and the architecture of daily life.
Set entirely within the London Underground, a space deeply familiar to every Londoner, this body of work captures a rare and fleeting sense of unity. Beneath the city, beneath its chaos and categorisations, lies a space where boundaries dissolve. Here, in this subterranean blur of strangers and steel, people become shadows of themselves, and something human, unspoken, and collective begins to surface.
The photographs are rendered in black and white, high contrast and grain. Faces blur. Edges bleed. Identities dissolve into movement. Each image resists clarity on purpose — because clarity, above ground, is often just another name for separation. Through slow shutter speeds and visual distortion, the series strips its subjects of markers and labels, revealing a shared vulnerability that exists only in transit.
And yet, this unity is neither safe nor permanent. It is disorienting. The tube is a liminal world — a space between roles, between destinations, between selves. It offers no conclusions, only confrontation: with anonymity, with alienation, with the feeling that you are both everyone and no one at once.
When we rise back to the surface, we re-enter a world arranged by borders: visible and invisible, systemic and intimate.
The illusion shatters. The city divides again.
For me, this in-between space has always been magnetic. It forces identity into ambiguity. It dissolves the categories we carry so tightly above ground. And in that confusion — in that beautiful, momentary unknowing, I have found some of my deepest revelations.
Within the anonymity of the tube, I have experienced the most profound kind of liberation: the freedom to be no one, and in that, to become anyone.
the london underground
the tube as londoners call it
a fascinating network of underground railway system
built beneath the city of london
a place of refuge. a safe haven. an escape from the real world.
a place to daydream endlessly.
where you can find people from every walk of life, every culture, race, class.
and people from the most arcane corners of the world. you name it.
the part of the city that masks the divide between its citizens and visitors alike.
where everyone, irrespective of their status, income,background and religion,unite towards a common goal.
of arriving at their respective destinations.
a captivating public space that reinstates the commonality among us all.
that despite our vast differences, we're not all that different after all.
for a fleeting moment, the tube reminds us of our dream of a socialist and egalitarian world.
before we have to come out and face the realities of living in a divided city.