As I walked the streets of Central London, I was surprised to see that it was financial institutions I found most interesting. Their lights were left on for the passing flaneur to peer in. As a result, there were some of the more pleasing windows of the street, but not all. It was as if they were the selected works for the public to admire, yet few gave them a moment’s thought.

It was here that my journey began. I set out to document the facades, aesthetics and the goings on in and around the closed financial buildings of the City. I began to find themes and similarities, perhaps unique to such structures. Often there would be one guard with the lights left on and art and marble all on display. With most other companies switched off and closed down from public view I decided to find the fascinating amongst what was on show.

The combination of glass, texture, art and architecture was what first drew me in. But on closer inspection I realised I could select and abstract, just as John Berger reveals in Ways of Seeing (1972, Berger). He states ‘the camera moves in to remove a detail of a painting from the whole. Its meaning changes”. From this extraction, a superior image can be found than that of the whole piece or, in this instance - building and so its original derivation can be removed. Subsequently, I have selected areas like Lewis Baltz for the audience’s examination. Such inspections that would not normally be undertaken by the passer-by too interested in getting to their destination.

Consequently, the meaning of the images do change. The selection of images have the potential to be devoid of the associations with a financial institution which the whole image holds and instead could easily be shots of an art gallery, objects to be admired. Understandably, the artwork on the walls emphasizes this; if it weren’t for the fact that they often give off a sense of irrelevance, having been put there to simply fill huge walls with colour and texture or to show off wealth. Despite art, the selections remove their previous links with power, class, business and money and instead become solitary, empty, uniform, perhaps aesthetically pleasing and sometimes even unusual.

I hope to show a glimpse of another side. The sleeping guard, the forgotten windows, the accidents on public display. It is moments such as these, moments of human interaction between me, the observer and the subject that made me feel like a voyeur from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954, Hitchcock). While the rest of the world continued and I stopped to appreciate the moment, it felt odd to observe the unknowing stranger in this way. As in Rear Window, I often stopped to find a small array of individual stories and regions that were before me to interpret and document. Through this journey I realised how remarkable it is that so many of these little instances could happen on a single trip.

The scenes I witnessed, whether out on the street or inside the few lit buildings, should be appreciated by other passers-by. If you look closely at the strong facade that these companies present in full show, you begin to find attractions and details that the institution did not intend to show. So accept the invitation that these buildings provide to peer in and find anomalies. There is more than just impressive architecture or out of place art on the walls.

THESQUARE MILE

Berger, J 2008, Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin.

Berger, J 1972, Ways of Seeing. [TV Programme] United Kingdom, BBC.

Rear Window, (1954) Directed by Alfred Hitchcock [Film] United States, Universal Pictures.

Man With A Movie Camera, (1929) Directed by Dziga Vertov [Film] Soviet Union.

LaBeouf, S. (2014) 24/September Available at: http://t.co/JorQ4bXav1

Reinermann, L (2011) 1/June Available at: http://www.typetoken.net/typeface/type-the-sky-by-lisa-reinermann/

Baltz, L (2012) 3/August Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/tateshots-lewis-baltz

Oliver Vanes

B i b l i o g r a p h y