Urban landscapes
Keeping an eye for tidal waves to come A London mariner stands on the deck London is an island in an island Everything will come from the sea The Normans the Danes and the “who knows” Would it be so different if it was the Caribbean ? Photo Hugh Ardoin The Urban Landscapes Gallery
Flipping the bird to the stormy skies gathering over London city Like a Sauron’s (not Sauro’s) tower of iced vanity and steel Like a new-age “Rastignac” taunting the city Of the Balzac story of rag to riches, and back We live at the hinge of historic times Where we will get our fingers squashed Photo […]
The crosses’ last station at St Paul’s A cathedral’s dome rising like a golden nipple where heaven comes to suckle Believers and voyeurs rush helter skelter through the underground passages But Jesus does not need an oyster when he can walk on water So Caesar got his money back, a refund from above interest included […]
We dream, and we dream that we love, but it is just a dream And the whirling waters of life flow under the bridge The crowds on the bridge watch mesmerized, looking for a sign But their destiny just floats away, unrecognized In the distance the great towers of vanity stand tall Pretending to be […]
The sky pattern reflects on the riverside mud River Thames barrier has a mathematical mind of its own It will compute the tidal effect and the river flow and all thing super-human It is a machine with no room for poetry just steel and concrete locks But nature plays around and above laughing at the […]
Cycle and re-cycle like some flawed magic trick Rubbish heaps grow into mountains, cable cars rise to new heights The dismal skylines of a runaway cornucopia consumer society Packed in airtight containers and shipped to economic colonies Symbolic ride from East India on the Emirates Meridian Line Photo Hugh Ardoin The Urban Landscapes Gallery
Appearing at the River Thames shores near the barrier lock Spiraling towers that I imagine as Tolkien’s Rivendell Castle The elven king’s last refuge stands here shining under heavy skies We are part of our fantasy when we make pictures with one eye closed We wake when the shutter snaps to a CCTV world where […]
Corporate finance life size tombstones stand on Canary Wharf Standing shafts of steel and glass erected to some immortal CEO’s ego Cathedrals to the capital, endless cornucopia and Black Fridays Towers of a thousand sills, diving boards for the storms to come Pyres for dying Empires that were deemed too big to fall Photo Hugh […]
Like a surrealist yet hyperrealist painting with colors borrowed from Salvador Dali No melting clocks here, everything is fully automated including the sunsets Nothing may ever happen, empty driverless trains transporting invisible passengers A foretaste of a tasteless purgatory upgraded to heaven level Dungeons of a brave new world built on primeval fears Photo Hugh […]
Foreboding skies and crumpled waters set the scene A view from the bridge over Thames River at high tide The seas come to lap at the feet of the monuments In the distance the eerie dome of Saint Paul’s cathedral rise Atop of Ludgate Hill the human’s attempt to appease their Lord Reborn out of […]