Sonia Marin's work "London" here is about memory. She would claim that it is her memory, of the time her mother and grandmother came to London to live, but I am doubtful. I see my own childhood in these images, a misty time of loving, learning and longing. Sonia grew up in England, while I grew up across the ocean in Canada, but we share a common culture, and what she sees, I see in my own dim past.

The title image shows the stairway to my bedroom, ah, what a cold, forlorn place that was for a child, we had central heating only in that the coal furnace was under the middle of the house. The heat came up to the second story through holes in the floor and leaked out through the plaster and brick walls so fast that ice would hang from the ceiling  to be knocked off when we woke up.

Are there still laundromats? Ours must have been on the same street. As a kid I looked up into the sky at the airplanes, and into cars, wondering what it would be like to be somewhere else, or at least going there. What I saw mostly were brick buildings, and back alleyways filled with laundry, but it was not all devoid of beauty. The sun shone off of windows, and through glasses in the restaurant. Store manniquins always had a smile in the latest fashion and the local pond had lilypads to hide the water-babies.

Sonia also remembers that peculiar viewpoint of childhood, with the cheek laid onto the table or the park bench, everything in short focus and long lines. People's feet, reflections in windows, shadows and light, always light. When did that light stop streaming into my eyes the way it did back then, everything was always backlit, transparent, never in sharp focus or well defined. Always the light streamed through windows, bent around corners and came from mysterious places worth looking for.

We all lived in Sonia Marin's London once.    - Kim Taylor

You can see more work by Sonia Marin at www.soniamarin.it