A Fragile Utopia

I want to stop and think about how I experience the streets in my city. I’m interested as a photographer in finding a way of converting the spaces that we pass through on our way to our destinations, into the destination. What if the overlooked areas of our cities could hold as much meaning for us as our homes do, or our places of work, or schools. Even if we don’t realize it. The places we pass every day have an enormous influence over who we are and our general perceptions of ourselves. We compare ourselves all day to strangers that we encounter on the street. We react to disturbing things, or uplifting things. We are influenced by the advertising we see. We become bothered by people who knock into us, or bikers who nearly run us over. We fall in love in the streets. It plays a much larger role in our lives than we may understand. We spend time thinking about what we’re going to do once we get to wherever our destination may be. But, not so much about what we just passed through. It is the great subconscious subspace landscape that we all inhabit together. I know that often in the US public space doesn’t register so much with us. It’s significance doesn’t quite hit us until after we’ve moved away from there. Then one day we stop to remember the old place and, how much better it was than where we are now.