Category Archives: Art and architecture

Feb 21 2025
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Art and architecture, Daily Post

Recycling as artwork

Thursday 20th February 2025, 6.30pm (day 4,928)

Phone tableau, 20/2/25

Over the last two days I failed to mention my destination, which is Dubai — I will be here until Monday afternoon. Before returning home I may try to depict an urban scene, but it’s not a particularly photogenic place, in my opinion. Tall buildings, roads, flyovers. The Persian Gulf is over there somewhere, but getting close to it is not easy unless you are the guest of one of the resort hotels that line the beach, and I’m not: I’m here to work. (Yes, including over the weekend.)

But I did like this artwork which hangs on the wall of the pub/restaurant in which I ate my overpriced dinner. Better than landfill, anyway.

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Feb 10 2025
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Art and architecture, Daily Post, Interior

Admiring the “Siege of Troy”

Monday 10th February 2025, 2.50pm (day 4,918)

Siege of Troy, 10/2/25

It’s about time we had some more medieval manuscript and the Siege of Troy certainly gives magnificent illumination. This shot only hints at that excellence but I like the captured enthusiasm of the fellow students. I took plenty of photos of my own, don’t worry.

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Feb 07 2025
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Art and architecture, Daily Post

On Princess Street

Thursday 6th February 2025, 9.20am (day 4,914)

Princess Street shapes, 6/2/25

A sunny day in Manchester, and a good one for light rebounding off glassy and metallic buildings in various pleasing ways. The block in the middle has been a work-in-progress for at least a year now and so is still neither glassy nor metallic but surely this is planned — for now though it offers a good contrast to what turns out almost like a collage.

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Feb 03 2025
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Art and architecture, Daily Post

Waltham Abbey ruins

Saturday 1st February 2025, 1.45pm (day 4,909)

Waltham Abbey, 1/2/25

Struggled to find a particularly interesting photo once I got to the end of the day, but this one will do, with its frisky dogs and imposing architecture. This is the church of Waltham Abbey, in Essex, where I happened to find myself for the afternoon. The last of all the great monasteries of England to succumb to the corporate raiding of Henry VIII in 1540. The church still stands, but all the rest of it is just ruined old walls and gravestones.

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Jan 11 2025
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Art and architecture, Daily Post

Robben Island, Maximum Security

Friday 10th January 2025, 3.15pm (day 4,887)

Robben Island, 10/1/25

On the wall of the Cape Town terminal for the ferry to Robben Island is painted a quote from Nelson Mandela: “It is said that one only knows a nation until one has been inside its jails.” And he would know, as he spent 27 years in this place. The tour was worth doing, although it’s not as evocative a place as Alcatraz, nor as terrifying as the remains of the cells displayed at the War Remnants museum in Saigon. But none of these are places I would like to spend time — or Do Time. South Africa is a place which still has its problems but, with hindsight, the fact that it now seems to have had a reasonably stable democracy for 30 years post-apartheid, and all the systems and structures (like this place) which kept it going: these reflect well enough on the country.

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Jan 05 2025
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Art and architecture, Daily Post

St Luke’s, the bombed out church

Saturday 4th January 2025, 10.10am (day 4,881)

Bombed out church, 4/1/25

St Luke’s, Liverpool, was your basic, big urban church until the night of May 6th 1941, when the Luftwaffe decided to do some remodelling. It has been left like this ever since, as a memorial to all those who died in WW2.

How’s my symmetry on this shot? Hmmmm…. it’ll do. Apart from the barrier on the right-hand side, anyway. These kinds of thing always seem to be there to vex us. The other visitor, I’ll let him off.

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Dec 30 2024
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Art and architecture, Daily Post, Sport

Mural, Padiham FC

Saturday 28th December 2024, 2.30pm (day 4,874)

Padiham FC mural, 28/12/24

Both the weekend’s photos are from the football; two contrasting experiences. Here, the positive one at Padiham FC, an enjoyable game in a congenial stadium, one with character and distinctiveness. This mural has been painted since we last visited here two years ago, and, I think, its effectiveness can be judged by the fact that you do have to look twice to realise Joe, in his dark coat and grey woolly hat, is not actually part of it.

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Dec 10 2024
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Art and architecture, Daily Post, Hebden Bridge

Victoria Road

Monday 9th December 2024, 2.20pm (day 4,855)

When Clare first looked at this photo as I uploaded and worked on it last night, she thought at first the backdrop was one of stormy skies; but it’s not, it’s the woodland up the side of the valley. The reason that is not catching the sun, and the houses are, is that at this time of year around 2.20pm is the point in the day where the sun is already starting to go down behind the valley wall. Here, you get what you can in the winter.

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Oct 29 2024
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Art and architecture, Daily Post, Interior

Deep in the Barbican

Monday 28th October 2024, 1.30pm (day 4,813)

Deep in the Barbican, 28/10/24

In the brilliant 1980s TV series Edge of Darkness (which I really must watch again some time), there is a scene in which the hero evades his pursuers by deliberately running into the Barbican Centre. It’s an in-joke, but it works: forty years on this is still a rather difficult building complex to find one’s way around. Even as I took this shot there were two young American tourist types stood to my right, debating just which of the concrete ramps and overpasses and underpasses they needed to try next. But what the hell — I still like the place, both to visit and to photograph, and it does give good statuary.

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Oct 24 2024
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Art and architecture, Daily Post

Pub on Bloom Street

Thursday 24th October 2024, 5.15pm (day 4,809)

As I have said several times on here down the years, and all (logically) at this time of year, I think Halloween is a commercialist pile of plastic-pushing poo. On the other hand, this pub facade is quite well done. And as I have been walking past it, both to and from work, for years, I don’t remember seeing it before so someone has actually put in the effort in. Credit for that, at least.

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