On my walk to a regularly scheduled meeting with my mentor, I felt it be the chance to finally do some photographic references for my comic and studio project. I really wanted to get some photos of Norwich as I personally felt after living here for roughly three years, that it was very much an 'English' city. With its great mixture of old, Middle Aged and new building, it captures a lot of this lovely depressing English bleakness that I feel can only really be appreciated if you've lived in the country.
How closely do we observe the built environment? Using a camera I started to map the world around me through my lens, hoping to soak up as much of this 'British environment' as best as I could, for I really wanted my comic to capture this feel of England and what makes it this country.
One aspect of English architecture I was particularly interested in was the nooks and cranny's of building construction and lay out, for it seemed to me that instead of destroying the old, we seem to just stick buildings close together, which creates these lovely (in my opinion) nooks and hideaways for some of the most fantastic locations in the city.
I find areas like these, one that people would find very unpleasant with the homeless, the graffiti and the constant flooding, to be one of the most important community places in cities like these. Cause every time I go here, it's always different, always changing and always brilliant.
Buildings like the one on the right and below, are very important as they contain things that are unique to Britain, such as the window tax in 1696. Which caused some home owners to brick up their windows in order to avoid tax, a element that has given some buildings a unique charm.
Above is a very interesting building I'm constantly coming across on my commute, I find this particular building interesting as it is nothing like anything in the Norwich area. By the looks of it, it seems to be a building that was erected around the 80s to 90s during the business boom. But I wouldn't hold my word to it. To me, it's an old decaying wound that stands solemnly alone amidst the dirt, gravel and dust of a almost empty car park.
A huge part of the 'feel' for my comic, that I hope these pictures will bring, is reality: I want to get the feeling that these people are real, that their lives matter. I want to show the world and town they live in and show that it is one that has been lived, the people who pass by them on the streets have lives, the cars idling the road have owners or have been left to dust. History has happened in this world and as you flick the page you walk the miles the characters walk in their life time. I want people to be drawn into my illusion as much as I am being drawn in researching and making it.
