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The Grind

The Grind

by Steve Madden

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The photographs in The Grind by Steve Madden show the strange beauty of anonymous commuters behind the misty windows of the London bus network.

The images were all made during the evening peak rush hour over the course of three winters. They capture a small snapshot of the 5 million bus journeys made in the capital city every day. Madden would spend the mornings on the radio for the BBC and then journey into Central London whenever it rained or if it was freezing cold late in the day. The bad weather would lead to condensation on the bus windows—familiar to many Londoners—and create the abstract scenes Madden wished to photograph.

More about this book

The resulting images depict the visual experience of seeing an endless stream of unidentifiable people travelling past on the bus, with flashes of colourful clothes against the harsh lighting of public transport. The part-obscured subjects are often shown in moments of introspection, reverie and repose, sadness and joy, with the occasional fleeting glimpse of human interaction. Madden’s focus was the daubs and
splashes of colour with the commuters reduced to a blur. His portraits are cropped removing any edges of windows or door frames, freeing the portraits from bus infrastructure into rectangles of form and colour.

‘All the best pictures were the ones that got away, of course – it’s one of the world’s busiest cities, and it’s full of obstructions, many of them human. Itravelled all over London trying to find the perfect location, but there were certain bus-stops I was drawn to again and again. I’m sure I became a familiar sight in Finsbury Park, Hounslow, Islington, Kingston, Strand, Stratford, Waterloo, Whitechapel and more. London never stands still, change is constant, and several of the routes have been
withdrawn. The stop in the Strand isn’t there any more – that stretch of road is now pedestrianised. And misty windows aren’t what they were–buses are increasingly air-conditioned, and since Covid, passenger numbers are down. So what I did there is already becoming history. Change is what happens when you’re looking the other way….’

Madden grew up in London and fell in love with buses as a child—'I was a little bus spotter, running around London on my Red Rover ticket. I've got Routemasters running through my veins.’ Nearly 20-years ago he purchased a decommissioned Routemaster with three of his Radio 2 friends, and more buses followed. To this day, Madden remains the main-owner of one of the buses. In 2005 he photographed a woman on the 38 bus in Shaftesbury Avenue, framed by the bus-window and this image inspired his project The Grind—opening another chapter in his life-long fascination with the buses of London.

Published February 2025
232 x 290 mm
128pp 78 images
Hardback
ISBN 978-1-915423-73-3

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From the author

  • Steve Madden is a London-based photographer. He began taking photographs when he was 9-years old and his work was first published on the front page of his local newspaper when he was 14. He graduated from the University of Cambridge and although he has never worked as a full-time photographer, his work has been published in transport books, magazines and journals. Madden is best-known for over 40-years of work for the BBC and on commercial radio as presenter, writer, producer and voice-over artist. He was a researcher on BBC1’s Parkinson, an announcer/ newsreader and presenter on the BBC World Service, Radio 4, BBC1 and 2, BBC Eastern Counties, and BFBS, and spent fifteen years as a presenter on BBC Radio 2. Most recently he spent fourteen years waking people up in the mornings on BBC Radio Berkshire, and is currently producing and presenting a daily music show for Radio Victory.

  • ‘Thanks to the endlessly fascinating, anonymous bus passengers of London, without whom there would be no book.’

    - Steve Madden