A frightening lull in anticipation of the unknown

Once the Metropole or mother city at the heart of a vast global empire, London is now the dominion to a new world power. Subject to the flows of global finance and whims of markets, the city has become little more than an investment opportunity for multinational developers and overseas investors. Metropole records the brutally disorientating effects of this by documenting these legions of new corporate and residential blocks as they are constructed and occupied.

The story covers the famous Camino de Santiago de Compostela network of pilgrims’ ways that lead to the shrine of St. James the Great in Northern Spain. It’s a personal account of the photographer’s journey which lasted over 1000km throughout the spiritual passage.

Brian O’Neill is an Illinois-based sociologist and photographer whose work looks at the human condition and society’s relationship to nature. He investigates the various meanings of “industry” and how it affects local communities and environments. Beach Boulevard, his first photographic publication, is a small spiral-bound book in a small edition of 100. Rather than probing the typical documentary question “what’s going on here” it delves deeper and wonders how we actually got to our current sta