Capturing Tomorrow’s History: Why Steve Madden’s The Grind Matters More Than You Think
Welcome to this edition of [book spotlight]. Today, we uncover the layers of 'The Grind,' by Steve Madden (published by GOST Books). We'd love to read your comments below about these insights and ideas behind the artist's work.
Street photography isn’t just documenting the present—it’s capturing history before we realize it’s slipping away.
Every moment that feels ordinary today will become part of the past. The Grind freezes those moments, turning foggy bus windows and crowded commutes into something unforgettable. These images aren’t staged, and they aren’t about perfect timing—they’re about patience, instinct, and the ability to see what others overlook. This is a record of a city in motion, shaped by weather, routine, and fleeting glances.
London is changing fast, and The Grind captures a version of it that’s already disappearing.
Many of the routes and bus stops in these images no longer exist, and even misted-up windows are becoming rare. What started as a simple idea—photographing commuters through condensation-covered glass—became something bigger, a visual archive of a city in transition. The people in these photographs are anonymous, but their emotions, their presence, and the atmosphere of that moment stay frozen in time.
This is what makes The Grind more than just a street photography project—it’s proof that everyday scenes are worth saving.
The Book
The Grind is a photography book by Steve Madden that captures the unique beauty of anonymous commuters behind the misty windows of London’s bus network. Over three winters, during evening rush hours, Madden photographed scenes that reflect the daily experiences of the city’s five million bus passengers.
Balancing his role as a BBC presenter, Madden ventured into Central London whenever inclement weather promised condensation on bus windows—a familiar sight to many Londoners. These conditions allowed him to create abstract images, blending flashes of colorful clothing with the harsh lighting of public transport. The partially obscured subjects are depicted in moments of introspection, reverie, and occasional interaction, with compositions cropped to focus solely on form and color, free from the bus’s structural elements.
Madden’s fascination with buses began in childhood, leading him to become the main owner of a decommissioned Routemaster bus nearly two decades ago. In 2005, a photograph of a woman framed by a bus window on Shaftesbury Avenue sparked the inspiration for The Grind, intertwining his lifelong passion for London’s buses with his photographic pursuits. (GOST Books)
Overview of the project: What inspired you to focus on photographing commuters through misty bus windows, and how did your personal connection to London’s buses influence the development of The Grind?
To be honest, it’s difficult not to get inspired by what I was seeing. It’s beauty. Just that. You know it when you see it, and I chose to follow it up, because I simply had to. It helps to be standing in one place with your mind and eyes open – if you do that for long enough, something will happen. On the evening when it all started to come together properly, 9 January 2017, I’d gone to Euston to photograph the queues. It was a Tube Strike day, so the buses were all full and stuck in the inevitable traffic. Suddenly, I was reminded that the story, for me, wasn’t the queues at all. It was behind the windows.
My lifelong passion for London’s buses helped a bit, but it’s not the point. If you know the transport system well, it helps a little with the geography, but that’s about all. You’ve still got to find the exact right spot in each location.
The allure of condensation and abstraction: Your images rely heavily on rain, cold weather, and misted windows to create their signature atmosphere. What is it about these visual effects that intrigued you, and how did you work with these unpredictable conditions?
I think the unpredictability of the weather conditions is a big part of the allure. It’s condensation-lottery. I’ve had occasions where rain was forecast, but never happened. Or it stops during my train journey into Central London, so there’s nothing doing. You just have to work with what you’ve got. Or I’d just go off and photograph something else. I’m a street photographer, and you have to keep your mind open. The Grind is a sub-project within that, and I was working on at least two other projects while it was going on – it’s just the first to make it into print. I hope the others make it too.
The mechanics of The Grind are not complicated. I had a whole list of locations in mind – I wanted to get as diverse a demographic as I could – but sometimes the reality is totally unworkable. A good example is the top end of London Bridge. It should work (it’s busy) but it doesn’t. The pavement’s too narrow, the bus shelter’s in the wrong place, you can’t get far enough back to get the right angle, and there’s a steady stream of pedestrians walking in front of you. It’s hopeless. Gave up after 20 minutes. But there were another ten or so locations all over London that were really kind to me. Then it’s just a matter of standing around in puddles for hours in the rain or sleet. And you need some luck, too.
Capturing fleeting moments: You describe London as a city of obstructions, where many of your best shots “got away.” How did you navigate the chaos of the city to frame and capture the right moment?
Yes, the best ones do get away. In a teeming city like London, it seems everybody and everything comes along at the wrong moment, and obscures the shot. But what can you do? It does require a lot of patience. And silent prayer. The best times are when you can see the possibilities before the bus has even stopped. My personal favourite shot of all, the guy with the yellow head, is a great example. I could see him as the bus was coming into the stop. Then you have to pray the bus will linger long enough to get a clean shot. It was a really exciting moment. I knew I’d got something special, and it’s the last picture in the book.
Was there ever a moment when you missed a shot but ended up capturing something even better instead?
No, I can’t think of any particular shot that effectively “grew” out of a picture I missed. You can’t dwell on the lost ones, they’re gone. But, more generally, having to give up on a particular location, because it’s just not working, has led to better things. It’s a pain when I’ve had the images “in my head” in advance – you know that location will be ideal – and then you get nothing. Like London Bridge. When that happened though, it just made me more determined to make somewhere else work. If not today, then tomorrow.
Balancing anonymity and emotion: The figures in your images are largely anonymous, yet their postures and expressions convey deep emotion. How do you think the blurred, painterly quality of the images affects the way viewers relate to these commuters?
Yes, well, the emotion is a big part of the point. I hope viewers will be affected by the different moods in the pictures. I wanted the book to be as varied as possible. There’s genuine joy in a few of them, but there’s also a good measure of downtrodden. In some, the emotion is obvious – surprise, anticipation, boredom, sadness – but a lot of them are hard to “read”. I hope viewers will get beauty + emotion, or at the very least, be intrigued. And a few of the pictures are just shapes, or colour. No people in them at all.
A changing city: Many of the bus stops and routes you photographed have already disappeared, and misty bus windows are becoming rarer. Do you see The Grind as a historical record of a disappearing London, or as something more symbolic?
Change fascinates me, and it’s a surprising aspect of this whole thing. The Grind wasn’t about change at the beginning, but change is constant. As photographers, it’s a big part of the magic – we fix something in a fraction of a second, and it’s there forever. But only in the photograph. Isn’t photography such a gift? I love the fact that some things have already moved on. It gives me a thrill. All the pictures were made pre-Pandemic, for example, and who could have predicted that? It’s had such an impact on life in London. Most of the buses aren’t that crowded now, and air-conditioning is reducing levels of condensation. Three of the routes I used have been withdrawn. And one of my favourite Grind locations, the eastern end of the Strand, has gone completely – it’s been pedestrianised. Paradoxically, change is the only certainty.
Do you feel a sense of urgency now when photographing the city, knowing how quickly things shift?
That’s such a good question. Yes, massively so. Urgency is driving me on. Always does. With the passing of a few years, I’m able to put some of my work into perspective. Hadn’t predicted how quickly things would change. The Grind was a specific project – it had a start and an end – but this feeling of capturing something that’s slipping through our hands, it’s incredibly powerful, and it plays into my more regular work as a street photographer. A sense of history is intrinsic to who I am, and why I take to the streets to do this stuff. Photography, you could argue, is all about history. That’s not all, of course, but we do create a historical document with each shot. It’s only looking back that you can actually SEE the significance. It’s knowing this that reaffirms for me that street photography is worth the effort, however much we get disheartened at times. I’ve always felt this way, that we’re nailing tomorrow’s history, but I feel it more intensely now than ever. Maybe it’s to do with getting older. I’ve been photographing since the age of 9, and I’ve never been more in love with photography than I am now.
Your lifelong love of buses: You’ve spoken about your childhood fascination with London buses and even own a decommissioned Routemaster. How does The Grind fit into this lifelong passion, and do you see it as a personal project as much as an artistic one?
Yes, owning a Routemaster is a great privilege, and I couldn’t have done that without splitting the original cost with three Radio 2 colleagues. So I’ll always be grateful to Messrs Bruce, Dedicoat and Nove. But, honestly, there isn’t really a direct connection. If you’re a street-photographer, you’re always looking for interesting subjects, and I suspect I’d have found this anyway. But would I otherwise have been in Shaftesbury Avenue that particular evening in 2005? Who can tell? It’s a different part of me, though. At the risk of sounding precious, The Grind is a lot more about art than it is about buses.
Technical approach and location choices: You revisited particular bus stops in different areas of London, returning to places like Finsbury Park, the Strand, and Waterloo. What made these locations ideal for capturing the images you envisioned?
The technicalities are straightforward. I used a long zoom on a DSLR. That’s it. In virtual darkness, the exposures are quite long. Fortunately, I’ve been blest with steady hands. The locations? I really wanted to get to as many different locations as I could, because the demographics, the diversity, of London’s people are a big part of the story. Knowing London well really helps give you ideas about where the interesting places are. Then it’s a case of trial-and-error. You have to be prepared to stand in some pretty awful doorways – you go where the pictures are, and conditions can be a bit grim. I won't elaborate.
Evolution from a single image to a full project: The project was sparked by a photograph you took in 2005 of a woman framed by a bus window. At what point did you realize this could become a long-term body of work?
Yes, the key moment, as I mentioned, was in Shaftesbury Avenue, 28 October 2005. I shall always cherish that one single shot of a sleeping passenger. It was the tentative start to a very long process. I didn’t follow it up for literally years (other projects!), but I always felt that, one day, there’d be enough for a book of these pictures. And the project kept evolving. At the start it was much more “portraity”. By the end, it was very abstract, just because I preferred the mysteriousness. It’s colour, and shapes. To paraphrase Cartier-Bresson, all photography is about geometry.
How did your approach evolve from focusing on portraits to embracing this more abstract, painterly style?
I’m not sure. It just evolved slowly. There was no blinding flash. The more I did it, the more I realised it was about shapes and colours. Personally, I still love the earlier ones, the more “portraity” pictures, but it’s almost a separate thing. Another book! I’ve shown this work to dozens of fellow-photographers over the years, and when people keep saying “I prefer the abstractions”, you have to listen.
Advice for urban photographers: For photographers interested in exploring everyday city life in a unique way, what lessons from The Grind would you share to help them develop their own long-term projects
Advice for urban photographers? Never take advice. I try not to give advice, either. Because, as John Cleese says, nobody knows anything. But, if I had to offer a little, I’d say “Just keep going”. However weird or niche, or apparently meaningless your project, however narrow or personal, keep saying “Yes!” to photography. Don’t let anybody discourage you. You may not even understand why you’re doing what you do, but at the end of the day, your photographs are about you. And, with luck, one day, it’ll start to make a bit of sense.
To discover more about this intriguing body of work and how you can acquire your own copy, you can find and purchase the book here. (GOST Books)
More photography books?
We'd love to read your comments below, sharing your thoughts and insights on the artist's work. Looking forward to welcoming you back for our next [book spotlight]. See you then!
