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Shifting Landscape

Visual Art & Photography

via Scotland and Aotearoa New Zealand

Urbis

Black-and-white urban photograph of a heavily pruned street tree beside a curved pavement, with wire mesh around its trunk, a mailbox marked 24, utility poles and overhead wires, suburban houses, hedges and bins.
Clipped

Urbis is an open collection of observational photographs made with minimal intervention. The works stay close to direct recording, using framing, timing, available light and occasional lens distortion to attend to ordinary urban spaces, structures, vegetation and surfaces.

Made while walking through the city and its edges, the photographs gather clipped trees, hedges, fences, shopfronts, industrial buildings, signs, flowers and other details that might otherwise pass without notice. Some remain quiet and descriptive; others allow perspective, colour or distortion to bend the scene slightly without remaking it.

Urbis is not a closed series. It remains a place for photographs that begin in observation and hold to the particulars of what was there: how a tree has been cut, how light falls across a wall, how a building meets the street, or how living and built forms briefly fall into relation.

The collection below continues through occasional posts, gathering individual photographs, small groups and developing observations as they are added.

  • Close colour photograph of small round green leaves and reddish stems growing in a dark gap between two green-painted wooden surfaces. Sunlight highlights parts of the foliage, while cracked paint, wood grain and tiny pale flowers remain visible.
    Green Light

  • Square colour photograph of red geraniums beneath a dense flowering vine covered in small white blossoms. A weathered red tiled roof appears at the upper left, with dark green trees and a clear blue sky behind.
    Floral Arrangement
  • Black-and-white photograph of two leafless, heavily pruned trees beside a dark suburban fence. One spreads tangled branches across the right side, while the other stands near an open gate. Rooftops, utility wires and rough grass surround them.
    Shade Tree
  • Vertical colour photograph of three silhouetted figures standing at different points along a ramp. Dark posts, beams and diagonal railings partly obscure them, while setting sunlight catches the fence posts and warms sections of the blue-grey structure.
    Good Standing
  • Square black-and-white photograph of dense ivy spilling over the corner of a wooden fence and narrowing a shadowed path. Clipped trees, a lightly clouded sky and overhead power lines appear behind the sunlit foliage.
    Cornered
  • Black-and-white photograph of a large rounded tree behind a pale timber fence. Houses frame the tree on both sides, utility wires cross the sky, and bright sunlight reveals the grain and knots of the vertical fence boards.
    Fenced In
  • Black-and-white photograph of a chain-link gate with a “PRIVATE PROPERTY KEEP OUT” sign, dense foliage, wooden posts, a chain and a weathered tree trunk leaning diagonally across the entrance.
    Private Property
  • Close colour photograph of an ageing sunflower with a large tilted seed head and dry yellow petals. A fresher sunflower faces away behind it, with green leaves, tangled branches, garden structures and a bright blue area in the background.
    Yellow Flower

  • Vertical black-and-white photograph of a worn concrete wall covered with repeated portrait flyers, protest notices, torn paper and broad painted lettering. Scratches and faint figure drawings mark the exposed surface above.
    Flyer

  • Square black-and-white photograph of tightly clipped shrubs spaced along a white-painted wooden fence. The nearest leafy bush dominates the foreground, with two smaller shrubs receding beneath power lines and a lightly clouded sky.
    Bush Magic
  • Square black-and-white photograph of people carrying a handmade banner reading “Food not bombs for the tamariki (children) of Gaza,” beside a painted Palestinian flag. Palestinian flags rise behind it as the group moves across patterned paving in a city square.
    Tamariki

  • Square black-and-white photograph of a weathered wooden fence and gate with a bolted metal hinge. A large rounded hedge, clear sky with light cloud, and overhead power lines blur in the background.
    Wooden Post

  • Black-and-white urban photograph of a dense clipped hedge beside a pavement, with a rounded topiary-like mass, a metal mailbox marked 88B, bare pruned trees, utility poles and wires, and part of a house visible above.
    Manicured
  • Black-and-white urban photograph of a heavily pruned street tree beside a curved pavement, with wire mesh around its trunk, a mailbox marked 24, utility poles and overhead wires, suburban houses, hedges and bins.
    Clipped
  • Vertical colour photograph of rough, weathered wooden fence boards lit by low sunlight. A light blue weatherboard house with white trim rises diagonally behind them against a clear blue sky.
    Blue Wall
  • Square colour photograph of an industrial parking area beneath a deep blue sky. A blue brick building stands beside a yellow workshop, with white parking lines, cracked asphalt, gravel piles, an orange cone and a small utility vehicle.
    Blue Sky
  • Black-and-white photograph of pruned trees and squared hedges beside a tall white fence. A large rounded tree dominates the foreground, while smaller evenly spaced trees recede along a narrow pavement through alternating sunlight and shadow.
    Tree Line

• URBAN •