These Fragments I Have Shored Against My Ruins

This picture is part of a series of 85 black and white photographs of London. Entitled “Unreal City”, this photographic series was inspired by T.S. Eliot’s famous poem “The Waste Land”. In Eliot’s poem London is the “Unreal City” in which most of the characters in the poem have their entrances and exits. The photographs reflect many of the themes of the poem: a strong sense of alienation; people’s inability to connect meaningfully; the cruel demands of the city; the failure of religion to provide comfort in this broken world; and the apparently unbridgeable divide between rich and poor. The dark humour which is evident in several of the pictures emphasizes the “unreality” of life in the capital, but also holds out a few rays of hope that all may not be lost.

Covent Garden. This picture explores the theme of masks, but here it is combined with the total disintegration of personality. In “The Waste Land”, “fragments” refers to the great cultural achievements of the past, which are held onto amid the ruins of civilization per se. In the picture “fragments” is transposed to significant objects from a personal journey.