encroaching old age, incipient claustrophobia, or sheer lack of imagination, 

i’ve recently been finding it very difficult to pick up my camera and leave the house to go out walking the streets of london as a flâneur in the baudelarian sense, or as an intrepid 21^st century psychogeographer, or even just a random geezer with a camera. my recent excursions have left me disappointed when i dutifully download the images to my computer. the truth is that although i’ve been posting a lot on instagram — @kened — garnering likes and follows, it gives me little in the way of any deeper delight. some of my posts there have prompted oohs and aahs, but little of the discussion and interaction that instagram offers and promises. nice to see others’ work nevertheless.

i use my camera more in unfamiliar surroundings. the streets of european towns, cities and capitals never pall, something always catches the eye. the streets of london have become flat, like the photos i’ve been taking here. photographs, as we know, are in most cases two, not three-dimensional. the flatness i speak of here however is not physical. it’s the flatness of overfamiliarity. the flatness of indifference and the uninspired. i know that the fault lies with me not london.

the gloom of the winter months lying ahead with short days until late march next year, seem to reflect the negativity of current times in the uk. a government of corruption and regressive incompetence, no end to the pandemic in sight, with the possibility of another uncontrollable wave over the winter months. people’s zero to ballistic intolerance. the atmosphere sometimes seems suffused with hatred.

i’ve often wondered what it must have been like to live through the depression years of the 1930s. it sometimes seems we have a taste of it here in the 2^nd decade of the 21^st century.