A new photobook is looking for the London beyond the landmarks

Shutter Hub is inviting photographers from around the world to contribute to a portrait of the capital that stretches beyond its most familiar streets and monuments.

London has never suffered from a shortage of photographs. Big Ben, Tower Bridge and the red buses have been reproduced so often that the difficulty for a photographer is not finding something to point a camera at, but finding something new to say about it.

A forthcoming photobook from Shutter Hub is asking photographers to do precisely that.

The City Series: London will bring together 100 photographs of the capital, with submissions open to professional and amateur photographers around the world. Rather than concentrating on the familiar centre, its organisers are encouraging entrants to explore all 32 boroughs and consider the people, buildings, landscapes and less obvious details that make up contemporary London.

The book is being produced by Shutter Hub Editions in partnership with Battersea Power Supplies, the museum and gift shop at Battersea Power Station, and is due to be published in spring 2027.

For Karen Harvey MBE, the photographer and social entrepreneur who founded Shutter Hub in 2014, the breadth of the city is the point.

“We think there’s just as much value in capturing a community festival or gig as the atmosphere in a glamorous London restaurant,” she said. “We love seeing revitalised spaces, like Battersea Power Station, and also the places that have barely changed.”

It leaves photographers with a considerable subject.

More than 300 languages are spoken across London, while its built environment moves from Georgian terraces and Victorian industry to postwar estates and some of the most ambitious contemporary architecture in Europe. Alongside them are thousands of green spaces, markets, places of worship, nightclubs, high streets, cemeteries and the quieter residential corners in which most Londoners actually spend their lives.

The most interesting photographs of the city have often emerged from these ordinary places. London’s visual history is as much a record of its inhabitants as its monuments, documenting changing fashions, communities and neighbourhoods alongside the transformation of the physical city.

Harvey wants the new book to continue that tradition of different perspectives rather than prescribe a particular image of London.

“Whether you’ve visited once, you regularly spend time there, or you’re a Londoner, you know there’s plenty to photograph wherever you look,” she said.

Shutter Hub has previously staged exhibitions in London at the Old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane and the St Bride Foundation near Fleet Street. Its publishing arm has produced collections including Food Stories, To the Sea, Night Moods and Home.

The London project will accept photographs in colour or black and white, and both portrait and landscape formats. The final selection will comprise 100 images.

A launch will be held at Battersea Power Supplies in 2027, with everyone who submits work invited to attend.

Lara Acaster, director of Battersea Power Supplies, said the partnership was an opportunity to see how photographers interpret the city surrounding the Power Station.

“We’re looking forward to seeing how photographers capture the vibrancy of our city,” she said.

For entrants, the challenge is therefore rather broader than producing a technically accomplished picture of London. It is deciding which London deserves to be recorded.

Submissions for The City Series: London close at 5pm on November 12, 2026.

Submit work to The City Series: London