LOOK

I collected as many ‘LOOK’s from as many London streets
as possible, and then chose the best to display side by side,
as a series.

As you can see from the final 15 images, the sign writers
clearly have very little style guidance, and the wear and
tear of shoes, wind, sun and water is uneven, to say the
least. Some LOOK’s look like they were painted yesterday
while others are barely there.

It should be remembered that these are signs that we see
every day yet hardly notice, even though they tell us to LOOK!
And they certainly help save countless tourist lives, too.

So this is my very literal approach to street photography,
focusing on the actual street itself. In fact, this series was
the inspiration for part of my book-length poem on London,
London: Ghost Autopsy. The relevant section is below:

XII (excerpt)

…
Bringing us always back to
The wet pavement
The street itself, the surface
The city’s uneven, dirty, broken face
The slippery, pock-riddled skin
The gum-spots and reflections
The discounted, the discarded
and the butts
The grime and the filth
The trodden in and on
The scrapings and the dregs
Here is where we are.I plan to continue this approach of marrying image-making
with poetry for the London Villages Project.

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