I researched Seawright’s project Invisible Cities (Seawright, n.d.).  In this collection the images “examine how peripheral developments and settlements have become a frontier through unconventional and largely unrecorded means” (ibid.).

I found the series interesting because it reminded me of the time I spent in Nairobi, Kenya and also Harare, Zimbabwe.  The images aim to capture the essence of the city without resorting to showing the major landmarks of that city, and neither the captions or the text on Seawright’s site tell us this.  In that sense I feel a paradox looking at the images, they could be any large African city, they are anonymous, and this is why they are able to remind me of two very different cities.  But at the same time, their intimacy, their ‘realness’ remind my very much of how those cities felt as well as how they looked.

This assessment of the images reminds me of my reading of Photography And Artistic Photography where De Zayas states that an image can be captured with a focus on purity of form, but then the same image can be viewed with an artistic perspective as it triggers an emotion in the viewer (De Zayas, 1913).   I feel that this is the clue to the paradox, did Seawright begin with a desire to capture the pure form or did he begin with an intent purely to capture the form in front of him.    

In terms of these images as compared to my own photography, these images are close to the types of images that I am striving for but not yet succeeded to create as well as I want to.  There is a mixture of images with and without people, and it is the solving of paradox I discuss earlier that seems to elude me.  

Bibliography

Seawright, P., n.d. Invisible Cities — Paul Seawright. [online] Paul Seawright. Available at: <http://www.paulseawright.com/invisiblecities> [Accessed 31 October 2020].

De Zayas, M., 1913. Photography And Photography And Artistic-Photography. [article] Available at: <https://www.camramirez.com/pdf/DI_Week6_PhotoAndArt.pdf> [Accessed 30 October 2020]

Figures

Figures 1 to 3.  Seawright, P., 2020. images from Invisible Cities. [image] Available at: <Seawright, P., n.d. Invisible Cities — Paul Seawright. [online] Paul Seawright. Available at: <http://www.paulseawright.com/invisiblecities> [Accessed 31 October 2020].> [Accessed 31 October 2020].