Urbania vs [sub]Urbania (en)

Landscapes, places, spaces, paths...and people, lots of people; standardized or marginals; popular or “left aside”; loved or hated; mixed, “stirred” or isolated; in full or “piece by piece”; as a whole or in progress...all those, and much more, make what we call: a city (in simple terms and without making use of the British Encyclopedia).

All that, and much more, it's what I see, observe, look and “experience” in mi daily transits, routes and dèrives through the city; or, even better, through the cities, as it's never just one and, depending on who sees it, looks at it, “experience” it, transits it, travels it...in short, depending on who lives and inhabites the city, we'll talk about one or another or all cities at the same time. 

Too much maybe to document a city through a single lens. So, I've always had the need of “cataloguing” the photographs taking whilst “travelling” the city streets and beyond; so, the many possibilities of working in series; so, eventually, the photoworks and the photoseries (and their divisions and subdivisions: urban crew, futurism[o], in transit, urbanscapes...)

However, despite all that variety and multiplicity (the essence of any city in the world), it's very common that everybody, including the ones that “rule and decide”, tend to simplify our vision and comprehension of cities, between all “that” have positive connotations, the normal stuff, and all “that” is left aside as negative.

In the first case, every effort is made to highlight, promote, improve, develop and, obviously, to show up the “good and beautiful” of our cities; in the second case, let's say that all the “bad and ugly” is hidden, overlooked, ignored, forgotten...

(anode vs cathode)

As too simplistic as it is, and talking always in photographic terms, that makes things easier in a way.

The good thing though, talking about photographs, is that their “interpretation”, even by the author himself/herself, it's never just one but multiple. So, I've decided to publish and catalogue all the images produced between dèrives and projects under the “tags” of Urbania, the positive pole, and [sub]Urbania, or negative pole. At least for a while. Anyway, as all that it's also subjective, everybody will have to “extract and remove” all the different layers for themselves; and those are a lot...

urbania 10

 

[sub]urbania 05