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I am standing in a parallelogram of shrubbery outside London City Airport Ed is twisting a dial on his Mamiya RZ67 and squinting into its viewfinder He is wearing a Berghaus anorak, as standard, with a beanie hat, hiking boots and a flannel shirt His breath is clouding up around his face The camera’s lens is pointing at a factory in the distance, a complex heap of blocks and towers known locally as Sugar Mountain, officially as Tate & Lyle It rises abruptly at the end of the residential street, a gargantuan prison-like structure that might have functioned as a set for the film adaptation of 1984 had they not used the ruinous Beckton Gas Works a few miles east of here It is an architecturally hermetic building, anxious to preserve the final vestige of industrial productivity in an otherwise idle landscape Directly in front of us is a two-lane arterial road Cars zip past like urgent telegrams Every surface has been designed to enclose, repel or separate There are wooden fences embedded in concrete troughs There are concrete bridges and glass walls There are barriers, railings and painted lines—   ‘Excuse me? You’re not allowed to take pictures here!’   We turn to see a man in a hi-vis vest His nylon shirt is of that municipal noncolour that sits somewhere between turquoise and grey An ID card hangs from a branded lanyard at his neck   The best thing to do in situations like these is ignore the non-threats, take the photograph you’ve come to take and defend that tiny patch of civil freedom from the powers that seek to invade The official seems reluctant to break the invisible screen that separates the designated walking space from the decorative shrubs in which we stand It isn’t long before he strides forth, stepping through the plants in standard-issue boots, to reiterate his demands     * Consciously structured to minimise friction, slowness and delay, airports are places of social and spatial control Their architecture tends towards the abstraction of geometry, lines, lanes, parabolas and arcs; grids across which the traveller moves like a mathematical function Passengers