Marja-Leena Rathje
Home ::: underfoot, again

underfoot, again



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On our New Year's Eve day walk I took many photos, posting some of trees against water and sky, where I was looking up and out a great deal. To view the ones above, I'm looking down, something commenters have teased me about a lot in the past. No wonder, for I've taken numerous "underfoot" photos. The first may have been ones of the studio floor, then some on roads near home, and many others. Most memorable were the ones taken in London in 2009. A few of the former showed up in my print works, but many of the latter emerged in the London Underfoot series. I wonder what this new year will bring?

Marja-Leena | 02/01/2013 | 9 comments
themes: Being an Artist, Canada and BC, Photoworks, Urban


9 comments

Doors to hidden worlds.

Olga, yes! Doors or doorways can also be about looking into the past as well as the future... so appropriate for the beginning of another new year. This has made me recall an old post on Janus.

They are interesting. Ours here in TO are boring. I am forever looking down as I walk. Perhaps it's so that I don't trip on something.

Some time ago I read a great article about manhole covers in Japan. Naturally, now I have no idea what page I was reading but I did find some examples for you. I'm sure you already have reasons for a trip to the East so now there's another.

Dolores, the London ones are far more interesting and old. I had to watch my step closely over the uneven sidewalks in Muswell Hill and maybe that's how I became so fascinated by what was underfoot.

Susan, thanks for the link! Many of them look familiar, like the ones I linked to in one of the posts about the series. It was an article called Drainspotting, which might be what you were recalling. Oh, indeed, I can think of many reasons to visit Japan and the East, if I could...

Now if only you could open those little hatches and get into that strange, ill-lit, rather dirty world and meet its secretive inhabitants... And send back missives to the rest of us.

Marly, sounds like fun as in fairy tales, but if you mean like Alice, my claustrophobia would kill me, if not the fright over the wild life... :-)

That last picture, in particular, grabs my attention. Now I recognize your unique style while finding it enigmatic. That's because I'm superficial compared to you.

Hattie, I don't try to be enigmatic, but maybe I see the world a little differently, noticing odd things up close and playing with what I see. I love finding connections, such as when I saw these and recalled previous times I'd photographed these kinds of objects and then done a series of prints on them.

But, Hattie, you are not superficial. I admire your focus on social issues on your blog, for instance. And you do have an interest in art or you wouldn't be here, right?