Big city perspective

“I have been documenting the changing skyline for some time now. The practice of accessing the vantage points necessary to do this is called roof-topping. Curiosity about roof-topping photography too often shifts uncomfortably from content to context: where the images were once simply about the view, the allure of trespassing and accessing off-limit areas often takes the forefront, denying (or simply forgetting) the beauty of the images themselves. For myself, I have always done it for the solitude.

The drama of a lone figure against the city in this image is very striking. It serves the twofold function of biography (isolation), as well as placing the figure inside culture. In this sense, context is resolved. The concern is for what the image is saying, rather than how it was taken.

I have always described the photographs I take from rooftops as having critical distance. Above the restlessness of busy street life, these images offer a perspective concerning our own place within the built environment.

We built cities, and lost the possibility of stargazing. But it is important to feel small and insignificant in a universe of colour, distance, and light. So some of us decided to get atop buildings and city-gaze. The only difference is that our wonder is derived from staring out over our own creation, and not that of the Universe'.”