Shunt Lounge (under London Bridge Station)

This was shot in the Shunt Lounge, a bar and art installation/exhibition/performance space that is located in the massive Victorian-era brick arches and caverns that lie deep below London Bridge Station.

Access to this mysterious Victorian space is through a small, easily missable door opposite the lower entrance to London Bridge underground station. It takes a few minutes to find your way through to the main bar and events areas, and your sense of time and space is curiously eroded as you walk past and through different experimental exhibits. What you experience through the evening depends on what the organisers choose to put on; cabaret, circus acts, DJ sets, and so on.

There's a faint background sense of ancient damp cellars as you walk around, but this is soon forgotten. The overall impression you'll take away is of a place somehow separate from normal time and space.

The lighting is so dim in most of the Shunt Lounge that the exposures were each 2 seconds long. The result is a panorama that has a slightly surreal effect that is entirely in sympathy with the space it documents.

Shunt Lounge will open until September 12, 2009, when it will close and move to a new venue. If you're able, I highly recommend seeing this peculiar and mesmerising space before it moves.

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Europe / UK-England

Lat: 51° 30' 18" N
Long: 1° 6' 11" W

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Precision is: Medium. Nearby, but not to the last decimal.

Fuji S5Pro,
Nikkor 10.5mm fisheye lens,
360 Precision Adjuste