Paper short abstract:

Multiple surfaces mingle in this photo series, revealing a close encounter with London's urban space that contemplates the presence of self in our images, the interplay of intention and diversion important to theorizing visually, and the shared role strangeness and familiarity plays in image choice.

Paper long abstract:

I came to shoot London's urban space. The close encounter is revealed here in a short series of images. Camera in hand, my methodology involved wandering the streets of London - observing, finding, pursuing - motivated by the interplay of within and without that propels one step in front of the other. I focused on the various surfaces clean, cracked, wild, and tame which we journey upon and past in our urban environments. Along the way, concrete pathways yielded to something extraordinarily intimate and ephemeral. I encountered a London that imagined me imagining it in image.

This photo essay conveys my approach to and impressions of London as a visual experience, asking us to ponder three ideas pertinent to theorizing in image: we are never outside the images we take, important photographic opportunities reveal themselves when one wanders effectively the terrain between intention and diversion, and significant images regularly select themselves by instilling in us at once an impression of strangeness and familiarity.