Lmst

Feeding time for the shadow flock.

Fitzroy, September 2015

@psychogeography@a.gup.pe @melbourne@a.gup.pe @streetart@a.gup.pe

#shadows #powerlines #streetlights #streetart #melbourne #australia #psychogeography #humangeography #speculativegeography #liminalcities #hiddencities #invisiblecities

#visualpoetry #urbanphotography #streetphotography #photography

The shadow of a telephone pole cast on an exterior wall, and the powerlines and street light attached to the pole, intersect with lettering from a partially visible piece of street art in such a way that the shadow looks like the beak of a large bird that is feeding a smaller bird.

Drop area.

Fitzroy, July 2015

@psychogeography@a.gup.pe @melbourne@a.gup.pe

#itmustbeasign #melbourne #australia #psychogeography #humangeography #speculativegeography #marginalspaces #liminalcities #hiddencities #invisiblecities

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A warning sign reading DANGER ACID is mounted on an exterior wooden door. An upward-facing metal horseshoe is nailed to the door beneath the sign. Painted on the door underneath the horseshoe is a solid blue circle and a concentric red circle around the blue circle. Another sign is partially visible to the right of the door. It reads: "Pick Up Drop Area"

The subeditor in me is just itching to stick a caret in there.

I'm endlessly fascinated by how we use the city as a substrate not just for art, but for communication and raw human expression. When I first started this project I made separate IG accounts for what I saw as different aspects of the project: @ if.these.walls was for stuff like this, @ it.must.be.a.sign was for weird and funny signs, and my main account was for the more traditional urban landscape photography. I've done away with that compartmentalisation here, partly because it was a hassle but more because the parts feel like they want to be a whole.

Anyway. Expect more landscapes and less graff as I work my way forward through the archives. But for now enjoy Melbourne's sharehouse dramas writ large on laneway walls.

Image: Fitzroy, June 2015

@psychogeography@a.gup.pe @melbourne@a.gup.pe

#graff #graffiti #laneways

#melbourne #australia #psychogeography #humangeography #speculativegeography #marginalspaces #liminalcities #hiddencities #invisiblecities #urbanphotography #streetphotography

Graffiti in black marker on a turquoise brick wall reads "Patrick is a rat". The word "thieving" is written underneath and between "a" and "rat" with the implication that it should be inserted between the two words. Additional graffiti shapes in various colours are visible at the edges of the shot.

Look, I can't say I'm having a whole lot of fun right now – what with the collapse of democracy in my country of birth and its repercussions for the entire world.

But at the peak of the AIDS epidemic, activists had a saying: "In the morning we bury our friends, in the afternoon we protest, and at night we dance." Because joy is freedom. Laughter is freedom.

Doing my best to keep dancing.

Image: Fitzroy, June 2015

@psychogeography@a.gup.pe @melbourne@a.gup.pe @streetart@a.gup.pe

#graff #graffiti #streetart #wordsonwalls #funclub

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#visualpoetry #urbanphotography #streetphotography #photography

Graffiti on a cement wall reads FUN CLUB in black spray paint. Next to the text in green spray paint is a drawing of a human eye, with lines emanating from the top of the eye that are suggestive of a crown. Sparse vines spread across the upper part of the wall.

Un/intentional street poetry.

(Sticker text, for those with small screens and/or old eyes like mine: "Every single person you pass is a constellation of memory and perception as huge and rich and unique as whatever is inside of you. The terra incognita of every gaze, Saul Bellow calls it.")

Brunswick East, June 2015

@psychogeography@a.gup.pe @melbourne@a.gup.pe @streetart@a.gup.pe

#melbourne #australia #streetart #graff #graffiti #tags #slaps
#psychogeography #humangeography #speculativegeography #marginalspaces #liminalcities #hiddencities #invisiblecities

#visualpoetry #urbanphotography #streetphotography #photography

A close-up photo of an exterior wall in a laneway. The wall is covered in spray-painted graffiti and numerous torn and faded paper stickers featuring the tags of graffers. At the top is a sticker printed with the following text: "Every single person you pass is a constellation of memory and perception as huge and rich and unique as whatever is inside of you. The terra incognita of every gaze, Saul Bellow calls it."

I wasn't kidding about that obsession with basketball hoops.

Brunswick East, June 2015

@psychogeography@a.gup.pe @melbourne@a.gup.pe

#hoopspells #basketball #shadows #junkmagic

#melbourne #australia #psychogeography #humangeography #speculativegeography #marginalspaces #liminalcities #hiddencities #invisiblecities

#visualpoetry #urbanphotography #streetphotography #photography

A makeshift basketball hoop made of a round metal rim nailed to a vertical plank of old, grey wood is mounted on the wire security mesh covering a tall window set into the brick wall of an industrial building. Harsh sunlight glints off the window, and the bricks below the window are in deep shadow.

Laneway dreaming in a place that no longer exists.

Brunswick East, June 2015

@psychogeography@a.gup.pe @melbourne@a.gup.pe

#melbourne #australia #psychogeography #humangeography #speculativegeography #marginalspaces #liminalcities #hiddencities #invisiblecities

#visualpoetry #urbanphotography #streetphotography #photography

In a muddy laneway, a large puddle reflects blue sky and clouds overhead, and a fence made of wood and corrugated iron. Green grass pokes up through the puddle. Tire tracks are faintly visible in the mud next to the puddle.

Nothing profound to say about this one; I've just always liked how it looks more like a painting than a photo. No filters or post-processing, aside from the most basic tweaks to black point and tone curve to fix some murkiness.

Brunswick East, June 2015

@psychogeography@a.gup.pe @melbourne@a.gup.pe

#melbourne #australia #psychogeography #humangeography #speculativegeography #marginalspaces #liminalcities #hiddencities #invisiblecities

#visualpoetry #urbanphotography #streetphotography #photography #fineartphotography

The word "Cool" is spray-painted in white on a weathered brick wall next to a rusting, corrugated metal sheet.

Another bit of enigmatic graff that I still wonder about.

Brunswick East, June 2015

@psychogeography@a.gup.pe @melbourne@a.gup.pe

#graffiti #graff #wordsonwalls #writingthecity

#melbourne #australia #psychogeography #humangeography #speculativegeography #marginalspaces #liminalcities #hiddencities #invisiblecities

#urbanphotography #streetphotography #photography

Close-up of a brick wall with graffiti reading "TOLD NO ONE" in thin white letters.

This humble image will always be special to me. It marks a crucial turning point in the perceptual game that I've been playing for more than a decade now; an evolution of my relationship to place and to self.

When I began this project I was an immigrant trying to find myself in my new country, which at that point had already been my home for seven years. But even after all those years I still felt fractured and disjointed. And so I started walking, retracing my relatively short history here in hopes that I could walk myself from the past into the present and arrive home with a more coherent sense of self.

To my surprise, it worked. But I had wrought this magic with tools that ceased to serve me once their job was done. The existential, autobiograpical lens through which I had been filtering my walks grew cloudy and dull. I got bored.

And then, as will happen with boredom if you're able to sit with it long enough, something new emerged. As I wrote some time ago:

"Perhaps it was this very boredom that made my attention more available for other frequencies ... [which offered] an expression of something inexpressible; something that only this moment could convey, yet which seemed inextricable from so many other moments that might be ...

... I found that these frequencies often communicated through a language of composition. Not just this broken plate, but its particular pattern; the precise lines of its break. The two halves stacked together just slightly askew. An arcane geometry of shadow, light and texture that seemed to hint of things beyond itself."

More on this experience, including a meander into Georges Perec's theory of the endotic: https://dissertation.the-parallaxis.com/part-four/bricks-concrete-glass/

Image: Brunswick, May 2015

@psychogeography@a.gup.pe @melbourne@a.gup.pe

#melbourne #australia #psychogeography #humangeography #speculativegeography #marginalspaces #liminalcities #hiddencities

#visualpoetry #urbanphotography #streetphotography

Two halves of a small, broken ceramic plate lie stacked one on top of the other, the top half slightly askew. The plate has a decorative border, and is resting on rough, textured concrete step. A deep shadow cuts across the top half of the step, just above the top curve of the plate. The rest of the concrete shimmers in bright sunlight.

Possibly the beginning of my quiet obsession with urban basketball hoops.

Brunswick, May 2015

@psychogeography@a.gup.pe @melbourne@a.gup.pe

#hoopspells #areyoudreaming #graff #graffiti #wordsonwalls #streetart

#melbourne #australia #psychogeography #humangeography #speculativegeography #marginalspaces #liminalcities #hiddencities #invisiblecities

#visualpoetry #urbanphotography #streetphotography #photography

Lol. Possibly my all-time fave piece of graff.

Brunswick, April 2015

@psychogeography@a.gup.pe @melbourne@a.gup.pe

#graff #graffiti #wordsonwalls

#melbourne #australia #psychogeography #humangeography #speculativegeography #marginalspaces #liminalcities #hiddencities #invisiblecities

#urbanphotography #streetphotography #photography

Visitors.

Brunswick, April 2015

@psychogeography@a.gup.pe @melbourne@a.gup.pe @streetart@a.gup.pe

#melbourne #australia #psychogeography #speculativegeography #marginalspaces #liminalcities #hiddencities #invisiblecities
#everydaymagic #hellofromtheotherside #thismightbeagame #visualpoetry #urbanphotography #streetphotography #photography

I've always had a complex relationship with this photo. Not so much love/hate, but maybe pull/push? The aesthetics appeal, but the situation frustrates. Heaps of high-end building materials just dumped and rotting, most likely intended for "luxury" apartments (ie overpriced dog boxes) that were never built. Or they were tossed because somebody who could afford to change their mind did so after an order was placed.

Anyway, #eattherich

Brunswick, April 2015

@psychogeography@a.gup.pe @melbourne@a.gup.pe

#melbourne #australia #psychogeography #speculativegeography #marginalspaces #liminalcities #hiddencities #invisiblecities #junkyard #visualpoetry #urbanphotography #streetphotography #photography