Blog written by Sharon Lin Tay, film/video/digital theorist and curator, Middlesex University

The Borders bookshop near where I live has a little section dedicated to local history. Trying to while away 15 minutes while waiting for someone to show up this weekend, I browsed through Gavin Smith's Islington in Old Photographs.

It is interesting to see photographs of what your neighbourhood looked like in the 19th century. In particular, I was particularly struck by pictures of the Archway Bridge.

The Archway Bridge sits above the Archway Road (duh!) between the Highgate and Archway tube (subway) stations. It's not a particularly salubrious stretch of road; in fact, I look at it as a stretch of cement to be endured to get from one place to another.

It doesn't help that Londoners regularly refer to it as The Suicide Bridge.

Yet, in that book of old black and white photographs, the Suicide Bridge looks rather more dignified.

I learnt that it was once a much narrower gateway, and one photograph depicts it with dense foliage on either side. At some point, it was extended to widen the road, I suppose, to allow more traffic to pass through. Voila, The Suicide Bridge as we know it today.

Those photographs let me see the Suicide Bridge with fresh eyes. It wasn't always so sad looking and ladened with such grim connotations. Landmarks and geographical spaces have cultural and historical memories.

The present is composited with layers of the past, alongside with the social and the political. Looking at old photographs of your intensely built up neighbourhood that was once traversed by horse and carriage, and which once boasted swathes of farm land, makes one acknowledge the temporal dimension of space.