What I See

Fine I’ll admit that, since the sensor in my 15 year old Nikon DSLR is ruined and when I shoot on film it’s on 400 Tri-X, everything I shoot is in monochrome but Monday seems like as good of a day as any to share some recent street shots.

I wrote in a recent post about why I try to always have a camera with me. There are scenes that just jump out and if I’ve got a lens to frame them then I can document what I see. Sadly, a lot of what I am seeing of late is the continued urban decay of almost everywhere I go. There is this obvious line appearing between the shiny and sterile gentrified areas and sometimes just the next street over. I really felt some of that today.

The contrast from one end of this street to the other is frankly jaw dropping. Almost as though gleaming reflections in the mirror-like glass and steel structures of the ‘renewed’ shopping centre are blinding us to the decay of what is now a forgotten part of town. Buildings like this post office which stood strong in dutiful service for decades have since had their windows whitewashed or smashed and their once proud structures left to rot.

In truth you don’t even need to jump between frames to see the breakdown of places which used to be the warm focus of attention. Only yesterday I came across concrete blocks, almost ironically covered in cheap plastic astroturf grass. A half hearted facsimile of nature, draped over chunks of cold lifeless man-made stone, felt like they were trying to trick us into forgetting that there is a world away from the towns and cities.

For all of the limitations of 80s brutalist architecture, there were at least efforts to try and bring some semblance of nature and joy into places through works like this mural. Now though it stands almost looking like it is bleeding into the ground around it. Perhaps even crying as it remembers when it was fresh, young and an attractive part of town. When it was place people would meet up rather than hurry past to get back to the comforts of a shiny new world.

This juxtaposition is everywhere now. It’s not even a case of getting off the beaten track as much as it just peering around the corner of the commercially cynical centres of commerce. I don’t know if it’s just the monochrome that’s capturing the contrast of these redevelopments against the communities they leave behind. Maybe it’s just Monday again and I’m feeling the blues in black and white. It does however seem to be omnipresent in almost every town and city I’ve traveled to, in the UK or overseas.

Even the nostalgic community memory that came to life in the gorgeous artwork of this underpass, found itself rudely interrupted by a black, graffiti tagged, intrusion of a power cabinet. This mural was a loving reminder of times past. Now it’s fractured with a stark reminder that progress doesn’t care for such nostalgia. It just keeps building over what once was.