What I See

Why does my camera come everywhere with me? It’s a good question and the honest answer is that I never know when I might want to document what I see. Today’s trip out to meet my parents was a classic example.

Camberley, a largely uneventful Surrey town, was the venue of choice for today’s get together. After finding somewhere to park among the hodgepodge of dated 80s and 90s alleged architecture, I walked along the pedestrianised centre. Between the boarded up failures of department store takeovers and the drizzle soaked pavements which seemed as grey as the February sky, there was an uneasy sense of a town that felt forgotten.

Looking up at the multi story glass fronted buildings, formed of abandoned offices and shops, I couldn’t help but think how much this town must have lost since they were built. The bollard sectioned street was however home to a string of seemingly superfluous restaurant chains broken only by the ultra modern ‘Atrium’ housing a bowling alley, a cinema and of course, even more chain restaurants and takeaways.

The opposite side of the street to this glass and steel cultural dystopia, was home to a long closed department store, which I am sure is only still standing until they can get planning permission to convert into more housing that local residents can’t afford. One brightly lit and decorated storefront, a Primark, stood open with a steady stream of drenched puffer jacketed youths coming and going through its inviting double doors, like gnats to the only light on a dark quayside.

The building housing this beacon of disposable fast fashion was part of the extraordinarily dated ‘The Square’ – an early 90s shopping mall which lacked even an attempt at finding an identity in this dismal landscape. It wasn’t the glaring LED lights of the shop windows which caught my attention however. In the next alcove, under the covered entranceway of the abstractly named Bietigheim Way, a less derivatively linear shape stood jutting out from the canopy. A makeshift home nestled between the anti-classical columns of a failing precinct.

I’m not sure if it was the sagging fabric of the rain battered tent or, the way the outline of the columns seemed to be straining under the weight of the tired and washed out sign but there was a feeling of cohesion. Something which should flag as being clearly out of place felt somewhat perfectly in keeping with the scene surrounding it.

The scooter and collection of bags and boxes gathered outside this dampened dwelling fed into the sense of a life taking place right here on the street. Not a cold day sitting in a doorway for shelter but, a real establishment of a daily routine, a life under the disused entrance of an exhausted shopping centre. This felt more than a temporary disaster, it felt like devastating acceptance of impossible circumstances.

A town with boarded up and empty windows, patron-less restaurants and plastic grass covered concrete blocks for seating, prompted little to no surprise when such a visible presence of homelessness appeared laying right at its centre. Perhaps in its namesake of Bietigheim, a picturesque village in south western Germany, a tent would have felt like an unusual sight but in its damp grey concrete surroundings, it felt composed.

To my original question however, why do I take my camera everywhere? I think it’s because this type of desperate scene is no longer a surprise. That’s not to say that the scale and frequency of these hostile living situations isn’t still shocking and painful to witness, only that it is sadly becoming the norm in more and more of the UK’s towns. If we don’t capture and document these hardships, perhaps we will simply stop noticing altogether.