Urban Color II

So here there is a continuation of a previous post where I presented a series of pictures of a little project I am doing on my free time. Just a bit more of my thoughts and new images.

When working on my project ‘Pre-Olympic Landscapes’, I took a picture that illustrates very simply the change in the urban landscape, but also the division of spaces. Two things are predominant in this picture: the intense blue and the fluorescent orange.

These are alert colors designed to take our attention. They lack of nuance and frivolity. These colors dye temporary urban objects, like walls, cones, fences, but also road signs as well as other signs. These objects are abundant in our cities, and they organize, divide the urban space. Sometimes we also find them in public buildings like council states, having a function of cohesion/identification of a group of buildings, not to say a aesthetic one.

These objects are abundant in cities, and make us follow directions, avoid obstacles, circulate safer. They are part of the conduct rules in our society. But they also become obstacles we want to jump and break.

But my real motivation to photograph these objects/ colors is the aesthetic feeling (wouldn’t say pleasure) I find in them.

We often find these colors covering geometric shapes, that repeat as patterns, and when they are bathed by an aggressive sunlight, can provoke scenes of considerable abstraction. Then I have in my head an unexpected tickly feeling, and I dream of triangular explosions of Kandiskian shapes, of hieratic but at the same time dynamic geometric forms.

So I have been out in the street again, looking for it, and found it. I also found other things I am exposing here as a roughly edited series.

All the pictures are taken in & around Hackney, in Stamford Hill, Tottenham, Clapton and Homerton. I’ve used 35mm Velvia film.

This one not much to do with what I was talking about, just a picture of Hackney 🙂

Advertisement