William Oldacre Photography

Back to Blog

A Puzzle

Light Signatures series, day, colour photograph, art, abstract, abstract expressionism, creative, city street, urban, downtown, cityscape, speed, blur, movement, motion, red, blue, green, muted, streaks, waves, swoosh, pattern

Aurora Borealis, 2014 – Light Signatures :: (click to see more)

The city is a puzzle to me. I’ve always viewed it as a maze in which I must find the shortest or quickest path to traverse – perhaps this is the way cab drivers think too. But there is a certain alienation that occurs when you view the place you live as a puzzle to solve – as a series of way points between origin and destination.

For me this has resolved to some degree by an inexorable rise in the number of destination points surrounding my home, so that areas I pass through become less about space I travel through, and more about another destination I pass by. Odd as it seems – even after living in the same house for 20 years now – I don’t know the names of all the streets in my immediate hood. Perhaps from a lack of destination points on those streets – even though I’ve traveled down them all many times.

Maybe it’s my mental map that’s slowly populating with points of interest – whatever this is – it underlies my perspective of this space I occupy and call home – this city I travel through in my daily life.