One of the Seven Noses of Soho by Rick Buckley (1997)
(Meard Street, London W1)
Photo by Stephen Alexander (Feb 2026)
I.
Connecting Wardour Street in the West to Dean Street in the East, there are many reasons to love Meard Street in the centre of Soho.
Firstly, there's the beautiful Georgian architecture to admire; Meard Street is one of the few surviving streets in London from the early 18th century (most of the houses were built by John Meard, between 1720 and 1732).
Secondly, Meard Street was home to the great English artist Sebastian Horsley, who lived at (prostitute free) number 7.
Thirdly, it's on Meard Street that one can find - should one wish to - one of the Seven Noses of Soho ...
II.
The Seven Noses of Soho are the work of British artist Rick Buckley [1], dating to 1997. Plaster cast reproductions of his own nose, they protrude from the walls of buildings to which they are glued in a pleasingly surreal manner.
Initially, there were over thirty noses, but now only a handful survive [2].
Intended as a political gesture, the noses are a protest against the introduction of CCTV cameras across London and the threat posed by a surveillance state (Buckley had been inspired by his reading of the Situationists).
For Nietzsche, of course, the nose was the refined philosophical organ par excellence, not merely a political symbol. He used his nose to sniff out the corruption in modern morality and culture and thus saw it as an essential tool for the revaluation of all values: "My genius is in my nostrils", as he once informed his readers [3].
But, however we think of it, placing noses on buildings is no real countermeasure to the spread of CCTV cameras and since 1997 the increase in their number - not just in central London, but across the UK - has been truly frightening.
If one includes private and commercial cameras as well as those operated by the authorities, it is now estimated by the British Security Industry Association that there are around twenty-one million of the fucking things snooping on us all [4].
Whether we see this as the triumph of Mr Nosey Parker or of Big Brother, depends, I suppose, on how seriously one views this development.
Notes
[1] For more information on Buckley, visit his website: rickbuckley.net
[2] The other six Soho noses are located at Admiralty Arch, Great Windmill Street, Bateman Street, Dean Street, Endell Street, and D'Arblay Street.
[3] See Nietzsche, 'Why I Am a Destiny' (1), in Ecce Homo, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1979), p. 126.
[4] See the recent report published on the Clearway website: click here. The UK may not be top of the list of most surveilled countries in the world - that spot is taken by China - but we're not far behind and on a short walk through London you can be expected to be filmed at least 300 times (entirely without your consent).
