Video: Billingsgate Fish Market

This short film based on time-lapse photography shows a day in the life of Billingsgate Fish Market. On Tuesday 11 December 2012, we set up cameras on the first floor gallery looking down the length of the market hall above the beginning of the central isle. We took a photograph every 10 seconds from one o’clock in the morning until midday. Every hour or so, I walked around the market floor making short sound recordings of whatever was happening at the time. The film we made is a combination of the sequence of images speeded up (so one hour is presented in 30 seconds) with snip-pets of sound corresponding to the same time period in which the photographs were taken. It shows physical activity, movement, interactions, patterns, rhythms and flows which cannot be perceived in real time. And it shows how the market comes to life through work.