Back in my aht-see (phonetical spelling) days, when I was working on an advanced degree in a small, rather claustrophobic program and had to write pretentious descriptions of my ahtistic proclivities, I was known to describe what I was drawn to with the phrase "urban landscape." Never mind that a lot of my subjects were photographed in parks and woods and even on studio tabletops--just never mind that. Today's point is that I'm struck by how the three images I casually tossed into my desktop folder all fit under the urban landscape rubrick.
This is a screenshot, a still from a webcam that I've loved for years. The scene: the train station in Chita, Siberia, at 3 am on a Tuesday morning. Chita, a city with 300-thousand-plus residents, has a long and politically eclectic history (it's quite close to China), but what interests me is the activity at the train station at various times of day. The webcam streams in real time, so check it out if you've ever thought at all about what contemporary life in Siberia might be like.
Here's the station at 9:16 in the morning the following day. Watching the webcam is like looking through a knothole into a hidden world.
The final urban landscape of the day is a scene much closer to home. I took this while on a lunchtime walk yesterday near where I work. I was struck by how the light turned the Transamerica Pyramid a stark white, setting it in contrast to the foreground buildings.
Cities for me embody both the best and the worst of what humans are capable of creating. I find them endlessly fascinating.
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