Photos

Downtown Chongqing - meandering around alone on the streets seeing what i might bump into when i spotted this most creative of fences separating off the public walkway from a public works area. At first there was just the car reflected in it so i waited for people to appear - great! Just like a fairground hall of mirrors.......my impressions of urban China were so distorted by images of the past before I visited this city.....I know my impressions of China are still very distorted though.......on both my trips I have flown into and worked in two of the largest urban conglomerations of South West China with only a couple of small trips outside.....but flying over northern China and then to the South West from Shanghai have shown me quite another world from the air.

Our perception of places is always distorted by our own pre-occupations and the always moving traveller rarely gets beyond the surface skin of the onion.....and usually in a very specific way.......if I travel I prefer to go somewhere and stay....and return...and it is the people and these relationships as well as making images which inspire me.

As a working traveller one can see and understand so much more but it is still a form of distortion.......we have to live creatively with that and keep peeling the onion.

The young lady in the yellow top obviously wants to appear quite a bit taller than she is by those big heels and platform soles.......pity she didn't stop to look!

Below is a gallery from my second trip to Chongqing in May 2007

A Portrait of Chongqing

Just realised why I was attracted to this image - there is a thematic reference to paintings I was making about 25 years ago!