Category: Photography

Neglected Structures & Overgrown Places #28 — Going Nowhere Fast

Two-wheeled trailer

This two-wheeled trailer, piled high with household rejects, has been parked at the side of a road for a week.

To me, it’s symbolic of life and all the psychological dross we accumulate over the years. How often do we find ourselves saying “I’ve turned over a new leaf”, to meet with speedy failure? We do the equivalent of loading our unwanted behaviour in a trailer, but can’t find the willpower or motivation to drive it away and dump it for good on the rubbish tip.

For instance, who really wants to hang on to things below?

  • a green sofa (envy)
  • black rubbish sacks (black dog moods)
  • broom handles (unrealistic notions of looking like a stick-thin model)
  • white doors without handles (false notions that the grass is greener on the other side)
  • old cupboards (constant worrying about family skeletons)

My trailer would contain old shoes, as I need to walk taller with a confident spring in my step, instead of thinking that great success happens to other people.

What would your trailer contain, and would you have the willpower to drive it away?

Neglected Structures & Overgrown Places #17 — It’s Growing, That Old Timber Stack

27th NOVEMBER 2014

Timber stack 02

28th AUGUST 2014

Timber stack 01

When I first saw this timber stack, it was relatively neat and ordered, like a storage area belonging to someone who keeps bits of timber for a purpose such as for use in a wood-burning stove.

In three months it has deteriorated into a haphazard heap, which this week its owner has crowned with some colourful painted wood. Now I’m thinking, this hoard of timber is a case of “out of sight, out of mind”.

Into which class of person do you fall?

  • Do you throw things out unless they currently serve a useful purpose, or might do so in the identifiable future?
  • Do you hoard things just in case they come in useful at a later, unspecified date?
  • Do you dump stuff, treating it as “out of sight, out of mind”?