Close to Nowhere

These photographs were made over a twenty-year period between 2001 and 2021. The idea for the project grew out of series of experiences Paul had whilst traveling to give workshops, seminars and conference talks at a variety of cities across the world. These cities included: Paris, Shanghai, Berlin, Trieste, Bogota, Las Vegas, Manizales, London, and many more urban spaces. After approaching the completion of his black and white photographic project about London’s streets in 2006, he became increasingly interested in working with colour. He says:

“It's not that I no longer wanted to work in black and white, it’s just that I was starting to see the world around me differently, and there were times where colour was an important dimension of that world, central to my perception and creation of visual images that evoked memories of my experiences of moving through such spaces, in which I was often a complete outsider.”

 The experience of not knowing places produced a sense of geographical confusion and disorientation, and in 2005, after having missed his flight back to London from Shanghai, Paul stayed on in the city for a further week, and realised that he wanted to work with the possibilities of spatial “nowhereness” – the opposite of his experiences of photographing London, the city he grew up in.

Thereafter, whenever he was invited to give a workshop or conference talk beyond London, he would take time to wander around the various cities and to produce images that reflected for him ‘the collapse and conflation of geographic certainties.’ This in turn, impacted on how he saw and related to his own city.