Photo Diary: Pride Jubilee in London

Joining the crowds gathered at the far end of Regent Street, I watched as the parade participants prepared their outfits, prepped the huge number of floats, and painstakingly painted colourful rainbows on their faces. Pride in London is always an enormous event, but this year’s is the biggest ever; Almost 30,000 people are estimated to be taking part in the actual parade, marching through the capital to celebrate, protest, and stand up for equality, watched by a crowd that is expected to number about a million.

There is a historical reason for the scale of this year’s celebrations. 2019 marks fifty years since the Stonewall Uprising in New York started a series of events that kicked off the modern Pride movement. A Jubilee theme is the order of the day, with Parade groups honouring 50 years of activism. 600 groups are walking the route from Portland Place down to Whitehall, via Regent Street, Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square.

I was lucky enough to be allowed through the barriers that line the parade route in order to photograph the event. From Regents Park, I walked along with the flow of the parade, following the Lord Mayor’s float and snapping as I went, before setting up shop at the edge of Trafalgar Square in order to capture all the groups, floats and participants as they joyfully marched and danced through central London.

Although I managed to capture thousands of images of the day, I wasn’t too sure what I should do with them. I have far too many images to share on social media and rather than just having them sat unused on my hard drive, I thought I would create a gallery of photos from the day. Click an image to open the photo viewer.