I regret that 'Welcome to Frestonia' is no longer available online.

I first put an edit of these photographs on the web in 1996. Unfortunately over the last few years web culture has degenerated. It is now a free-for-all that includes an apparently limitless number of thieves, vandals, liars and scumbags, all hiding behind anonymous IP addresses.

I had years of hack and DOS attempts. I spent entire weekends hardening the site. Of all the web traffic I got, and bandwidth I paid for, 95% was morons trying to break the site. None ever got through, but 15,000 IP addresses managed to ban themselves. I was on botlist sites as a target, but that didn't make it any easier to accept.

This particular set of photographs relied on trust. The people who appear in them were open and generous enough to trust me to photograph their lives. Unfortunately, visitors far too often cared nothing for any of that.

In the early days, people would at least ask if they could use images. More recently they just help themselves and use them in ways that were dishonest, insulting to the subjects and just plain spiteful.

The abuse of copyright I could deal with. What I could not fix was the abuse of my duty of care.

The smartarse response to these difficulties has always been 'if you don't like it, don't put it on the web'.  Technically this is correct. There is no means of preventing people being childish, selfish, spiteful cowards. So it's gone and Fuck You.

To anyone who just wanted to see the work, I am sorry. From now on it's prints and paper. 

Exhibition 

11 Oct 2017 - 11 Nov 2017 at the Frestonia Gallery http://www.frestoniangallery.com/exhibitions/8/overview/

Recent media coverage

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2017/oct/30/welcome-frestonia-west-london-tony-sleep-in-pictures

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/oct/30/frestonia-london-commune-squatters


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