urban – Page 6

Urban Exoticism

Continuing yesterday’s theme, here are some more of the images that I didn’t feel quite made the cut for the Urban Exoticism submission.

Click any image below to see them all larger.

I recently entered a competition on “Urban Exoticism.” From my archive I found 76 images I considered candidates, but only 5 could be submitted. Over the next few days I’ll share some of those that didn’t make the cut.

click any image below to see them full size.

A space that needs a face lift

Escalation

53rd St and Madison Avenue subway station, New York

Is this a liminal space? It’s definitely in-between (the street and the subway platform). The blacked-out former advertising hoardings give it an abandoned air.

Plaza

Is this a liminal space? It appears to be a public sculpture plaza in a fancy building on Park Avenue in midtown Manhattan. But it’s empty and devoid of people. It’s the space between the street and the Lever offices. It’s attractive but looks rather forlorn and abandoned.

Rock Garden with Rat Traps

Since I’ve started consciously collecting images of liminal space (see my series, Neither Here nor There), I see them everywhere I turn.

The Two Towers

with apologies to Tolkien

Taking the Gardens Away

Another soapbox issue of mine – the Upper West Side Urban Renewal Project – a plan first mooted in the late 1950s to “clear slums” and redevelop the area. Developers were given mighty concessions to bulldoze people’s homes and rebuild, while making few concessions of their own. One of those was the provision of public garden spaces. In my neighborhood this was most often met with an open expanse of cement holding a withered sapling in a concrete box, or something a tad nicer, surrounded by a fence to keep out people from the neighborhood. With the expiration of these requirements after a period of about 20 years, building owners rushed to build retail space on the sites of these barren “gardens” (increased revenue), topping them with private parks open only to the residents of their buildings. So now we must look up to see our crown of thorns.

Sanitation

Tree and Wall

A candidate for adding to Urban Tree Portrait?

No Irony Zone

“Health and Wellness for All” who can afford to LOOK their Best. Be Best.

Democracy or Else

Brighton Dusk

Brighton Street Art

There’s a tremendous amount of art in the streets of Brighton, as evidenced by these few snaps (and see below) I got on the brief hour I had walking around between the Landscape of Inequality presentations and the Evoke/Provoke private view at Views in Transition during the Brighton Photo Fringe.

Brighton Shop Fronts

I was in Brighton with my former classmates and Evoke/Provoke collective members for the private view of Views in Transition, part of the Brighton Photo Fringe. I had about an hour between a truly excellent set of presentations from CRUX: Landscape of Inequality in the afternoon and the beginning of the private view to walk around Brighton for the first time. To see the pictures below larger, click on any one of them (on the web, if seeing this in email click the post title, above, first).