City Dimensions

In “City Dimensions,“ the monumental scope of metropolises is shrunk to scale models through the photographic technique of double exposure (shot on 35 mm film), transforming cityscapes into scenes more reminiscent of theatrical sets than realistic landscapes. The iconic Manhattan skyline appears as a mere maquette against the backdrop of the Wicklow mountains surrounding the 30-metre-high stone Glendalough Roundtower in Ireland. This ancient “skyscraper“—that once sheltered monks from danger and their books from imminent decay—peeps from behind the row of contemporary buildings, coalescing the dimensions of pastness and futurity, nature and urbanity into one vista. The Roundtower seamlessly merges with the modern high-rises erected half a world and centuries apart, as if they always belonged together, while the mountains and trees rise above them all, reminding us of the enduring domain of nature, which humans haven’t built. In another photograph, the exuberantly decorated dome of St. Savior on the Spilt Blood Church, depicting Jesus Christ and saints, is superimposed over a miniature street of multicoloured historical buildings in Saint Petersburg, delineating a perspective, like the eye of a telescope, through which to look at them. In yet another image, the ghostly shadow of a lone New Yorker, lost in thought, blends into the entwined silhouettes of branches. Massive granite columns rest on the surface of a wide river with a frail wooden bridge connecting its two shores in Laos; birds traverse the sky of the colossal, static architecture of New York before plunging into a natural environment; the chaotic, organic architecture of a tree cuts into the rigid structure of a glass skyscraper. Thus, this series unsettles the perception of the solidity of the great cities’ foundations and portrays metropolises as dimensions relative to time, place, and culture. For what is built of steel, glass, and stone is always built in relation to the other.