By project

Visiting a big city is always an experience to remember, for various reasons: you hate the place, you love the place, you just need to be there (otherwise you would not be visiting it), you take the opportunity to visit and enjoy it, and so on. A big city is a different thing for each individual, no matter the reason of going there, almost similar to instantly like someone or not. Life is such.

My reason is most of the time related to business; I have visited cities which were a pleasure to roam and where I loved to get lost in, and I had seen and visited cities which were a pain to be in. Different places have different vibes too, of course: the city makes you feel welcomed, or not. Again, this is something that applies differently to different people. In the last 20-30 yrs, I have visited (for longer or shorter periods) in some of the European large cities, like Paris, London, Berlin, Rome, Wien, Bratislava, Budapest and some others. A lot of smaller cities too, and the “liking criteria” applied to them also. But we’re talking here about big cities, so perhaps the smaller ones are my next project.

Some I liked, some I didn’t. Nothing wrong with the cities I was not happy to return to, just my particular criteria of what the city stands for in my little universe. Some were top of my preferences for history, others for architecture, some for night life or public transport, etc. I may come across as a picky person, but I am not. I am just looking for that connecting element that may bring me close to the life and the vibe of the city. Sometime I feel it, sometime not. It’s a question of feeling the heart beat of a place ( or not, as which may be the case), I am sure you know what I mean.

This is one of the reasons I have had this project started, to portrait the feeling of someone who is just visiting an unknown city, without a compass to point him to the special places which may (or may not) define the city for him. A conglomerate of images, taken usually from a moving cab or bus, because this is what he sees. People, street corners, trees, buildings, and again, people. I have no idea what defines a “visitable” city, but each of us have an internal “city-o-meter” that makes us to feel good or less good in a place. Perhaps I am not very good with words, I just hope this all makes sense.

So, in short, this project is about a whirlwind of images, somewhat disconnected, each with its own meaning, but in the end, it all goes down to the puzzle that a large city is to a visitor. It was named (appropriately or not) “City slices”, because this is what I remain with after.