I'm off back home to Ireland for a couple of weeks. But before I go I thought I'd leave you with a few photos from a project that I've been working on. I’ve been busy on a long term project that I’ve long wanted to start, well, since I arrived Shanghai in fact. I wanted to photography the architecture of Shanghai and although I’ve done stuff here and there I always failed to find a specific vision of the Shanghai I wanted to represent, focusing on the architecture but representing the emotional and fantastic rather than the mundane.

Then another thing happened. Almost every other photographer in Shanghai was shooting the same god dam thing! Pictures of piles of rubble from demolished old houses in the foreground and skyscrapers in the background. This annoyed me on several levels. 1. everybody was doing the same thing and the trend was getting old before it had even begun. 2. It was lazy, everywhere you go this can be seen and photographed with a casual stroll around the city. And indeed I saw many of the same shots on the backs of digicams at parties. The photos were unattractive and I disagreed with the vox populi that they are uniquely Shanghai. Any city that has gone through rebuilding is littered with these scenes, sure the architecture in question is always unique but the idea is not.

So ignoring what everybody else was shooting I went out last March and made two or three pretty lame attempts to capture the Shanghai of my imagination. I had recently seen an exhibition by Jerry Spagnoli of his Daguerreotypes of New York and I think they were too fresh in my mind. I came back with second rate versions of Jerry Spagnoli shots instead of Mick Ryan shots. I also realized that I had chosen the wrong area of Shanghai and what really embodied my apperception of the city. The architecture was right, British Colonial but the area I was in was inhabited by luxury brand clothing store and swanky bars. A short trip across the canal and I found the dilapidated haven of inspiration I had been searching for. The area was a wonder of historical architecture that spoke of times past and smelt of the rot that accompanies the abandoned blocks of a city racing ahead so fast it can no longer see the value of what it is leaving behind.

But I am not looking to expose the underbelly of the disheveled. There is still great beauty for me in these monuments despite their uncared for condition – the blackened stone, the damaged steps, the obtrusive air conditioners and variety of modern cabling that now looks dated itself. I’ve only started the project but I’ve already whittled hundreds of shots down to 60 or so that I am happy. And there’s a little bit of interest in them. One shot is being featured in next month’s B&W Photography magazine in the UK and a local gallery that is interested in putting a show together. When I have about 200 to 250 or so then I think I will have the collection of photographs that will represent Shanghai the way it has always been in my mind.

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