STEPHEN MCLAREN’S observations of the City of London during the big 2008 banking crash provide a scathing commentary on a fattened-up cow collapsing in the excrement of its own greed.

The photographer spent days on end prowling around the city, capturing its pulse. The frenetic atmosphere of that short period of implosion is there in his searing images, now published by Hoxton Mini Press in the book The Crash.

Revealing a keen observational talent and aesthetic sensitivity, the majority of the images are succinct and powerful visual statements – fleeting individual moments that give expression to the callous world of high finance.

“During all this time I was down there sucking in diesel fumes, listening to inane chat about upcoming skiing trips,” McLaren recalls in his introduction to the book. “Sometimes it was fun, but more often it was a galling reminder that the City of London, the Conservative Party’s biggest source of funding, was so powerful that it would always have the government by the short and curlies.

“On the day that the top rate of tax was lowered by George Osborne it seemed fated that I would see a box of champagne being manhandled down Gracechurch Street by a grinning financier.”

This is indeed one of the most powerful of his images but there are many others — a pair of high-heeled gilded and glittering shoes next to an immaculately creased pin-stripe trouser leg, three hard-nosed, bullish dealers marching past stacked tailors dummies in a shop window, looking like a heap of bodies in a concentration camp.

Medieval pageantry is contrasted with demonstrators protesting against the bailing out of the banks and a rough sleeper draped in his own sleeping bag — like a bulky burka — stands incongruously in front of the imposing classical splendour of the Bank of England’s portal. They are images that remain seared on the retina.

My only gripe is that I would love to see such images reproduced in a larger format book but that would no doubt make it too expensive for most of us to buy. Despite that minor carp, it is, like all books published by Hoxton Mini Press, meticulously and lovingly designed — a real aesthetic pleasure. And it's part of their series East London Photo Stories, which is well worth seeking out too.

The Crash by Stephen McLaren is published by Hoxton Mini Press, £14.95.