They were mostly taken when I first moved to London, maybe 15 years ago, when I set about exploring the city (and, indeed, The City).
The word that kept coming into my head was the one used by Versace to describe the clothes of Armani -- they all look so greige.
Grey and beige are the dominant colours here, with an occasional splash of blue sky or gilt.
While much of the city was old (that was obviously a Hawksmoor), much of it has been rebuilt time and again, leaving behind buildings and sculptures from different ages:
After a while, you get a feel for which artists made the biggest mark on the City -- famously Wren, of course, but here's another glimpse of Hawksmoor:
The Victorians and Edwardians copied with gusto:
But Modernism had, at that time, made surprisingly few gains (this building, incidentally, which I always thought was one of the better post-War developments, has since been demolished for some ghastly wannabe glass block):
I carried on photographing and this final shot, which seems to me to fit the mood of the rest rather well, is from Glasgow:
At the time, I don't think I realised just how melancholy these photos were.
2 comments:
When I first looked at these photos, I immediately liked them but didn't really know why....
I liked the simplicity and the very graphic compositions but most of all, Duc, you've said it in the last sentence, just "how melancholy these photos were".
Thanks, they really made my day.
Thanks for the kind words. Although it's hard not to be melancholic when you're photographing cemetery monuments and war memorials. Or The City when it used to be absolutely deserted at weekends -- utterly empty streets and eerily quiet. I loved it back then.
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