As I've mentioned before, when I was a photographer I was really into a thing called ugly beauty. I was obsessed with taking pictures of delicate and beautiful things, in a harsh setting.
The top photo was taken near my house when I used to live in Acton around 24 years ago, I would pass this derelict garage everyday and stare at the broken down car and the deprivation.
Sometimes I would just stand there for as long as 10 or 15 minutes, completely oblivious to all the people passing me, probably thinking *'what's that nutter staring at?'
I didn't care though, to me I saw beauty in degradation, and I wanted to show that. So I got my friend to pose for me, and I eventually ended up using this image on my card.
I simply titled it All Things Beautiful.
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This image was taken around the same place, we went back up to my house so that she could change into this skirt. I loved it because it looked like it could rip at any moment.
The funny thing was, less than a month or so after we took these images, somebody started developing the site and therefore cut off all access to it. They built some apartments on it, and that was that, nobody would ever see that beautiful ugly spot ever again.
I was strangely sad about that, but of course happy that I managed to take the shots before it was gone forever.