Deconstructed City (See - I've avoided titling this, 'On Reflection')

All Images: West Leicester, February 2020

...Because sometimes it's difficult to avoid the old cliches.  It can be a real drawback of maintaining a 'visual stimuli first' approach to one's art, I suppose.  I've thought (and written) quite a bit about the matter in recent times, as I've reflected on how I most successfully operate creatively.  It's pretty indisputable, at this stage, that whatever possible readings or theoretic/conceptual subtexts, I might aspire to in my work, it always feels more convincing when they are filtered through something I've seen (or picked up) out there in my immediate environment.  For me, the spontaneous thrill of recognising something via the senses (and therefore, a millisecond or two faster than the brain can process it), is always a slightly more vivid thrill than can be gained through research or the piecing together of ideas and narratives.  That stuff's all important, and hopefully integral to the final outcome - but the fact remains that evolution put my eyes just in front of my brain, looking outwards.

The drawback, of course, is that such unfiltered visual thrill-seeking can sometimes lead one to the kind of unquestioning eye-candy, that might have once graced the pages of something like 'Amateur Photographer' magazine, sometime back in the 1970s.  The danger is only amplified on a rare January day of crystalline sunlight, vivid blue skies, and a pleasingly undulating river surface - as happened here.

I suppose I could tell you these images constitute a knowing variant on my routine documentation of major construction projects - or that they subvert all that systematic constructivism, and are critiquing the expedient redevelopment of my already highly-structured environment.  I could even pretend it really is a retro-savvy appropriation of a bygone photographic trope.  But, if I'm honest - these are nothing more than a pleasurable diversion, and will likely play no actual part in the 'Constructed City' project at all.  I took them simply because, in the moment, it all just looked bloody lovely.

Sometimes - perhaps that's still enough.  You know - it's that really obvious kind of beauty.