Piecenumberfour_walking the city in order to experience it

The photos below were taken in central London on a recent visit. I went out with a couple of intentions in mind: to drop into the Photographer's Gallery and the National Gallery, and also to wander around, find some parts of the city I'd not come across before, or some parts I knew and, in photographing them, see them anew. I went out with the intention of walking in the vague direction of the National Gallery, from my starting point near Holborn, and stopping every 15 minutes to take a photograph of whatever presented itself to me.



































































I used to live in London and, sometimes, miss its vastness and the ability to lose yourself in midst of all those millions. I definitely miss the opportunity just to drop into the galleries, see a seminal piece of art and then wander back out into the streets...
In the 19th century, Charles Baudelaire came up with the concept of the flâneur, the gentleman stroller who was both part of the crowds in the new social spaces and removed from it, viewing with an artist's eyes the changing society. The flâneur become a conceptual figure in later philosophies of architecture, society and urban spaces.
The idea of the flâneur fits well with the rise of 'street' photography. In Susan Sontag's words: The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world 'picturesque.'