Wide angle: The threshold between street and alleyway meets the more-vibrant segment of the alleyway at a T junction.
I have always perceived alleyway as a negative space cleaved from the collective values and identity of the local community. These concrete crevasses depicted in media conceived unsavory imageries of drug abuses and soliciting that reinforce this already-thorny xylem of little pedestrian flux.
Little Cheung, however, challenged my stereotype against these narrow veins colonized by cigarette butts and rodents top-down: no more monochromatic, but dynamic. The alleyway I stumbled upon in Jordan is a sequence of rich colors and diverse activities. It provides everyday shelter for white collars silenced by conformity, for grassroots suppressed by economy, and undocumented immigrants stressed by authority. The sequence here acts as a spatial skewer for those unique, vibrant moments in their static, hectic schedules.
Zoom 1: An instance of water droplets surrounded by a saturated color scheme
Zoom 2: An unidentifiable yellow solid amid grey-tone pipelines.
Worm’s eye view: The facade above the eye level degrades into monochromatic boredom, which strongly contradicts with the color-rich alleyway.
Skewed angle: Alleyway can also be an art gallery.
Seriality: Smoking in the alleyway, despite its popularity and prevalence, often is a discrete activity people wish to avoid revealing.
Perspective: Bicycle parking lot under the red roof.
Framed View: This is the end of my alleyway, but also the beginning of a new alleyway.
Focus: Pipes are often used to hold barbed wires, preventing trespassing.
First-person perspective: There are grassroots striving to survive in the rapidly changing city by collecting the leftovers in alleyways.
Cropped view: Some segments of the alleyway are hardly visited, which perhaps is the reason for the dullness of the color.
Chiaroscuro: Positive space huddled by the dark atmosphere of this alleyway segment.
By: Lee Hae Jin
UID: 3035444176
I appreciate that you have tried to capture one particular back alley, and all activities that are happening in this space. I wonder if this space has even more to offer during different time of the day, i.e. morning, lunch, dinner, night…