London: The Corners

London: The Corners



Living
and working in East London for over 30 years,
photographer Chris Dorley-Brown has grown accustomed to change.
Weaving round bends and corners for the past three decades, the
city’s mass transformation has rendered it almost
unrecognisable.

Starting with the corner where he set up his photographic
practice, Chris’ hyperreal photographs provide a unique
documentation of an ever-changing landscape. An Orthodox Jewish
family and a woman pushing a pram appear on the street corner of a
half-demolished building, passing each other by, when in reality
they were never there at the same time. Using multiple exposure
images, different narratives play out simultaneously, creating
dream-like scenes that lie somewhere between fiction and fact.

Compare gritty London street shots of a bygone time with your
own Google street view sourced images and you’ll retrieve a starkly
changed landscape. Akin to film stills, these images show the
street corner as a location in flux, a place of intersection and
momentary interactions, and a metaphor for the ever-changing face
of East London.

The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane.

Stephen Fry

In Chris Dorley-Brown’s visual language, he computes the
contradictions and strides of an evolved and revolutionised
London.

The Corners, Hoxton Mini Press, £30

www.modrex.com

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