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Every day I go to work it’s pretty much the same. Up, down, up, down, up, down. Tunnel, station, tunnel, station. Sometimes I go to one terminus and sometimes to another and of course I work at different times of day but basically it’s all pretty much the same. Except it isn’t really. There are subtle changes every day and seeing them can turn into an obsession.
There’s this building. Some sort of office building, I think. Nobody ever looks at this building but for the past year or so I’ve been stopping to take photographs of it and letting my train leave late. Because it’s a magical building.
I love this building. It is never the same two days in a row. In the same afternoon the reflections change. Sometimes there’s a storm in the building and a summer’s day outside. Sometimes the weather is the same behind and beyond. Other times the building is transparent. And of course, there’s the story of the other building to watch unfold.
I think (although am not sure) that my favourite image is the one second from the end*. It almost looks photoshopped. But it’s not. I swear. I haven’t done anything to those photos other than crop out a little extraneous noise. It’s pretty hard to take a decent shot when you are legging it up a platform with coffee in one hand and a mobile phone in the other. It’s even harder when the signal is green and you know other trains are waiting to get into the platform and that you’re going to be late. I am not even remotely sorry for the trains running late. I needed to showcase a building.
Thankfully this building doesn’t need any assistance when it comes to looking wonderful. And the weirdest thing is, NOBODY looks at it. Ever. I have been watching this building for over two years now. The photos started about a year later. I spend a fair bit of time on that platform waiting to do something and I haven’t seen a single person so much as glance up. This is the equivalent of Howl’s Moving Castle slamming down on the High Street and nobody batting an eyelid. This building is such a non-event in the world that I was hesitant to even blog about it for fear of embarrassment that everyone would call it dull.
Sometimes I wonder how long I’m going to be photographing this building. Surely at some point I well get bored of it and focus on something else? Surely I will not spend years photographing this same building? And then I walk past it and it’s different again and I snap just one more shot. Because every day is different.
If you want to see the photos individually they are over here. I expect I’ll be adding to them at some point:
Reflections |
*and you note the sneaky way I make you watch the entire damn thing to figure out what I’m on about.