The City...
I must be a buildings nerd or something like that.
Every time I venture into the city (any city), I'm drawn to photograph scenes like this.
In fact, I shoot weird scenes like this one...
Mundane, banal scenes.
And I love doing it.
What's that all about?
It turns out, I'm not on my own.
There are loads of photographers doing a similar thing. Check Instagram.
It's a combination of urban landscape photography and social documentary work.
So, when I first shot a roll of film with scenes like this in every frame, it worried me.
What the hell was I doing?
The answer is a complicated one. Or, it is once you dig right into it.
Here's the thing, landscape photography took a sharp turn in the 70's.
A turn away from pristine, pretty scenes and nothing else.
There was a group of photographers, such as Stephen Shaw and Robert Adams.
They shot collections of ordinary, mundane places. Urban scenes that you'd pass every day.
Many of them would go unnoticed.
It revolutionised what landscape photography looked like.
Fast forward to today, and some of us are still doing it. Trying to capture the essence of the human-altered landscape around us.
That's where the complication comes from. It helps to know what the job is.
And it's this...
finding order in the urban sprawl.
Choosing which part you will feature in the photograph. It's about looking for structure amid the urban chaos.
Or, finding spaces that represent stillness. Those pictures count, too.
Given these points, I shoot a lot of urban landscapes. Be they in the city or a town.
The built environment is forever changing.