Toby Blackman

London Ulez reduced nitrogen dioxide to legal limit, mayor says The mayor of London says the fall in airborne toxins is due to the Ultra low emission zone expansion.

They thought it would take 193 years to clean the air in London, but they did it in 9

“Dr Gary Fuller, associate professor in air quality at Imperial College, described Ulez as a "game changer" for reducing toxins & he "could not recall a policy that matches its impact" www.bbc.com/news/article...

The use of photography Published in Visual Studies (Ahead of Print, 2025)

THANK YOU to the editors at Visual Studies @visualsociology.bsky.social for inviting my review of The Use of Photography by Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie, translated by Alison L. Strayer–another exquisite literary publication from @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social.

doi.org/10.1080/1472...

I am one of the 14 authors who chose to leave the Polari Prize, and I find myself frustrated and saddened at the way this entire story has been represented. 1/

The Trust seeks to appoint an Assistant Director, a newly-created position in our centenary year. This broad-ranging grants leadership position will cover three major activities: grant-making, representing the Trust and leading on key areas of policy development. www.leverhulme.ac.uk/news/current...

Visa rules ‘obstructing’ Gazan students from UK universities UCU’s Jo Grady urges Home Office to ‘do everything it can’ to ensure students with offers to study in the UK are able to do so

The UK government should be “going out of its way” to ensure Palestinian students can take up places to study in the country’s universities instead of “obstructing” them, the University and College Union has said. @julietterowsell.bsky.social reports
#AcademicSky

A dining room wall in elevation, the door at right open onto the lit hallway. To the left of the door, the traces of a radiator, removed: shut-off supply and flow pipes protrude vertically from the floor, a single wall bracket remains to the left, pulled fixing holes for its counterpart to the right.

I have learned things about myself, the weight of a full radiator, and the deep, black despair which leaks in their final moments.

In order of encounter, from the first of January to last Sunday, 29 June: Adania Shibli, Minor Detail Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion, Shame, Happening, I Remain in Darkness Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others Noreen Masud, A Flat Place Adrian Duncan, A Sabbatical in Leipzig Vincenzo Latronico, Perfection Annie Ernaux, The Years Amy Key, Arrangements in Blue Adrian Duncan, The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth Deborah Levy, Things I Don’t Want to Know, The Cost of Living, Real Estate Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume, Book I Jon Klassen, We Found a Hat Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume, Book II Adrian Duncan, The Geometer Lobachevsky Annie Ernaux, The Possession Lou Stoppard, Exteriors: Annie Ernaux and Photography Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street, and other writings Lauren Elkin, No.91/92: Notes on a Parisian Commute Susan Sontag, On Photography Helen Clarke & Sharon Kivland (eds), The Lost Diagrams of Walter Benjamin Paul Lynch, Grace Simon de Beauvoir, The Image of Her, translated by Lauren Elkin

January to June, 2025

Some days, I read ten pages.

Others, I (need to) re-read the same paragraph ten times.

And occasionally, I read a book in a single sitting.

Reading sustains me, and brings me joy.

Thanks for sharing this!

Rope is so good.

A dining room wall in elevation, the door at right open onto the lit hallway. A flat panel radiator—to the left of the door—hangs from a single bracket, sitting on the floor at right, compressing the thermostat and bending the supply pipe free at left.

The old, existing dining room radiator FELL OFF THE WALL.

Just finished Grace by Paul Lynch.

And I am not ok.

James Baldwin: You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone.

Claude: ______

James Baldwin: That is the goal.

Claude: [pulls a regurgitated mouthful from the bottom of a bucket of chicken wings]

Entirely reasonable.

Marseille: Architectures of Transit in Novel, Film and Place (1936-1945 and 2001-2021) This article is a study of Marseille and an examination of the spatio-temporality of transit through novel, film, and place. Adapted for the screen by Christian Petzold in 2015, Transit is a modernist bildungsroman exploring borders, identity and exile—a semi-autobiographical novel "written in transition" by Anna Seghers in 1942. This article retraces Seghers' route from Paris to Marseille, writing into the space and time of the train journey to form a site-writing, before examining a transitional space shifted from novel to film, the Mont Vertoux, and exploring the larger cultural conditions situating literature, film, and architecture. Drawing on the work of Walter Benjamin, lain Borden, Victor Burgin, Hélène Frichot and Naomi Stead, Jane Rendell, Katherine Shonfield and Dora Zhang, this article explores what Benjamin referred to as the "continuum of transformations" at play in the "removal from one language into another" of the self across disciplinary, temporal, and spatial borders.

Marseille: Architectures of Transit in Novel, Film and Place (1936-1945 and 2001-2021)

New OPEN ACCESS publication: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I’m proud of this one—a work exploring occupation, borders, identity and exile—and grateful to many.

Much like how.

LONDON NW5 FRIENDS:

a very poorly cat is being discharged from hospital tomorrow. This is fab, but the timing is tricky - the wonderful owner is receiving in-patient medical care until Monday.

Can you help cover the care gap? Or know someone who can?

Pls share 🙏🏽

[flashbacks in 2020 Lockdown]

Perfect – quote, coffee, and alt text!

I just fully got the shakes seeing that clip of the little girl escaping from the burning building

Inside the NY apartment where Christo & Jeanne Claude cast their spells.

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/09/r...

The unbelievable condescension we’re already seeing today towards working class people- suggesting they don’t travel to Europe or their kids might not want to go to university and study in Europe- is quite something to behold.

Very much look forward to reading this from Kreider and O’Leary!

🚨 New report from the Bennett Institute warns that social & cultural spaces like libraries, galleries & community hubs risk being overlooked without better ways to measure their impact. They’re vital for economic growth & tackling inequality.

www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/blog/value-o...

Just finished On the Calculation of Volume, Book II by Solvej Balle – only to learn Book III is not published until November.

Chef’s kiss. No notes.

Thank you!

☺️

👋🏻

Followed.

I passed too, went to The Photographer’s Gallery and bought some books instead.

It’s gone 10am now, and the queue’s perhaps a hundred people long 😭

A shot of freshly uncovered floorboards, revealing paint splatter and damp to the top and right hand side of the image, and handwritten text in the centre of the image — a first-person plea for help, PLEASE LIFT ME UP.

PLEASE LIFT ME UP

The shot which unlocked my thinking, writing and work on the house and home, grabbed late at night when I rolled the carpet back.

Fingers crossed this one's also selected and hung.

THANK YOU, Artful Dodgers for the beautiful digital C Type and for supporting a rush job.

A colour 35mm photograph, capturing my cats’ pawprints in concrete, at the softest stages.

In Concrete, at the Softest Stages

A morning spent mounting and framing prints preselected for the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh.

Fingers crossed this one's selected and hung.

THANK YOU, Make It Easy and Rhys Herbert for the print tutorial and guidance.