// cities & icons //
as my current mini exhibit (#SewingDaysUnderTheLighthouses) is closing in soon (until 25/5), I reflect upon how we ‘construct’ our impression of places/cities through giant landmarks & icons.
for Hong Kong, I know it’s probably not ICC/IFC, yet they’re like an omnipresence installed to our modern skyline. whether you like it or not, having them being captured (even when they’re not your main object to shoot) is somewhat inevitable.
for cities like Tokyo & Paris, the respective Tokyo & Eiffel towers are perhaps the most iconic to an extent that if you are a typical tourist, you will wish to witness/capture them as an evidence of visit.
for some other big cities, landmarks/icons might be more ‘evenly distributed’, such as London & NYC (even HK?) where there are no single landmark (in terms of size too) that would easily ‘beat’ the other landmarks.
a barometer would be to ask 100 people with questions like: “what is the single-most physical landmark that you think of can represent that city?”
for London, it could be the Big Ben, the London Eye, or London Tower Bridge etc. (you name it). but for the tallest (310m) & the always-visible from afar, it’s the Shard. I reckon that for more than half of the time, I didn’t mean to explicitly include it in the frame, but its mere presence definitely affected how I approach to compose the photo and in turn narrate a story for a place/location.
in between ‘actor’ & ‘supporting actor’, sometimes the line could be kinda vague. & for many occasions, it could well be a splitsecond decision by the photographer too.
2025.03
London (feat. the Shard)
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