Street Stripes
One November Sunday I went out in Bacup to take some photographs. After many days of rain the weather had temporarily cleared and I had to get out of the house. I did not have any preconceived ideas or plans about what to shoot. I have lived here a few years now, so I knew that I was not going to come across any new buildings, views, or landscapes that I had not seen before. I therefore decided that I was going to try to look around me without prejudice, unrestricted by conceptions about what is normally perceived as ‘beautiful’. From the work displayed on this website you may have gathered that I like graphic simplicity and enjoy finding patterns, rhythms, balanced compositions and contrasts. I look for the beauty that surrounds us and that we sometimes fail to spot.
To my surprise, and delight, I found my subject within a few yards of the back door. Trying to observe my environment afresh I also looked down, at what was under my feet, and there they were: lines. The multitude of lines painted on the road, lines created by the curb stones, lines created by different kinds of tarmac, lines created by the drying of the surface. After that first shot I knew that there was a good series of pictures to be made. The first few line compositions I found were more or less in black & white, but then when I got nearer the town centre I came across bright colours on the road. A little later still there were letters, words and names. I like the different colours and textures of these lines. Sometimes they compete for attention, sometimes new signs are painted over old ones, sometimes they almost disappear. Interpreting the meaning of these lines can get very complicated. After a while when they are worn away or painted over nobody knows what they mean anymore. And yet they are supposed to help us navigate through the traffic.
When I got back the prints I was pleased with the results. The details, like the little leaves, the cracks in the paint and the grit in the tarmac came out perfectly. I realised that they have more impact not as individual pictures, but as a series, or a combination of two or more images. What links them together is not only the subject, but also the lighting, the perspective, the texture, the treatment of the digital negative, the location, etc. I took these pictures in the late afternoon after a rain shower, one of very many in November 2006. As a result the light was quite 'warm' and the drying tarmac looked very contrasty, because the light hit it at an acute angle. I suppose I could find more lines in other places, but I don’t think they would fit it with these that were all taken within a couple of hours and within a few hundred yards of each other.
As I recognise that these images really belong together I have decided to offer them at a discounted price: buy one get one free! There are a total of 26 images in this series. To see them all please go to the Fine Art index page here.
