A Seafront shelter window.

Perhaps the way I take photos on the street has something to do with a reluctance to engage with people directly. I usually prefer to observe unseen, taking shots through misty, dirty windows. Or perhaps going unnoticed enables me to concentrate undisturbed, losing my sense of anything around me apart from the subject in front of my camera…on a path to producing something that’s meaningful to me. I’m detached…from almost anything going on around me but totally engaged with whatever I’m seeing in front of my camera.

The seafront shelters along the south east coast of England are a subject that I return to frequently.

 

 

The marks made on the glass surface of the shelter windows add a layer of meaning while forming a barrier between myself and the people in the scene beyond. The graffiti, dirt, dried up drips of various liquids, residue of sticky tape and so on, allude to the presence of others at some time in the past and the people beyond the glass become unwitting players in a visual game where past and present meet and where the viewer flips between the marks and textures close up and the vague shapes of figures beyond. Interpretation of the images is left to the viewer’s imagination. 

 

 

 

 

 

There’s a connection between my close up macro photos of insects etc. and these shots of people going about their everyday lives, albeit obliquely. I’m fascinated and amazed by the ordinary things all around me. Immersing myself in the process of producing an image is a spiritual activity that fulfils a need in me to create. My aim primarily is to make something that pleases me though I’m delighted if others enjoy them too.

Here are links to more of my urban surface images http://www.colleenslaterphotography.co.uk/urban-surfaces-i/and http://www.colleenslaterphotography.co.uk/between-the-piers-macro-project-7-july-2015/