You know how it is with old friends. You spend years in each other’s pockets then you drift apart. You get together less and less often. You end up exchanging festive greetings in December each year. And that’s about it.
You try and guess how they look now with a few decades on them. You try and remember how they looked when you were close. You struggle with this. You recall some details but nowhere near all. There was something about playing Scrabble, and writing on the shopping list they kept on their kitchen wall.
But the detail isn’t there, and there’s even less detail about some of the peripheral things that went on. And time goes on and you still haven’t been to see them.
You get the telescope out to try and see more clearly but it doesn’t help. It’s the wrong way round. And they’re getting further away.
The story behind the image. By daylight the scene is nothing to write home about. But at night, nearly midnight, all those extraneous elements and colours just disappeared, and the atmosphere of the Venetian night took over.
The story behind the image. There was something about the line of gravestones not just leading to the door but also taking you back in time as you walk along beside them.
“But it’s just a picture of a wall!” It’s also a picture of ambition moderated by pragmatism, of nostalgia, of seeing how things were, how things are now and how they got there.
Has something just happened? Or is something about to happen? Or perhaps nothing ever happens up here in the waiting room on the roof of the known world.
Way back in 2011, I was fascinated by the buildings in Manchester – mainly the Victorian and Edwardian commercial architecture. There was lots to go at, and much that was in an attractive state of dilapidation. But there’s lots of modern buildings too and I regret not photographing more while I was there.
