Photography series makes sky-high London property prices into disorientating patterns and composites

If by some strange miracle you’re a person who’s managed to miss Vice articles about chancers in Clapham trying to rent out their neighbour’s Wendy House for £956 a month, overlook Guardian pieces about why we should leave the capital immediately and move to Hastings or side-step the so-ludicrous-it’s-almost-funny-but-isnt-funny-because-I’m-in-so-much-debt London rent prices, let me tell you something. London property is crazy expensive. And again, as you may or may not have heard, there’s a hell of a lot of luxury flats helpfully popping up into the skyline to remind us of the things we’ll never be able to afford and the injustice of the housing crisis.

Yes, these are all-too-familiar themes, and ones often explored by the creative community. But Lewis Bush’s photography project Metropole, which looks at the rapidly changing nature of our costly capital stood out for its sober, abstract aesthetic. The images are created using double exposures, with some works clear documents of cranes and skyscrapers, and others reducing buildings to intricate tessellating patterns. The overlaps and geometries aim to disorientate the viewer, “emulating the feeling of finding oneself lost in a once familiar city,” according to the artist.

The photographs have now been drawn together in a book, also called Metropole, and will be exhibited at London’s Metropolitan University next month.