Images © Julian Lass 2011
Concreted, steel-framed blocks along Hackney canal are minimalist cubicles, seeped in dusking March light, stepped racks, empty scaffolds. Shivering plants cling to crumbling walls, crowd-tamed black coots line the grassed verge, oblivious to heavy footfall. By the time I slow down, going west, at the building site past Kingsland Road that has upended a demolished warehouse, I meet a convoy of cyclists, joggers, iPod-nudging, tinging, slipstreaming, wheel-hugging, all heads turned east, a jugular highway for office leavers, an installation of perpetual motion, fluxing and flowing, while the sycophant, hyaline, oily-tongued water is at rest, untroubled by the currents passing up above. Brakes squeak, coots cackle, chimed notes rise from loosened glockenspiel paving slabs, a canal-side melody played by rubber wheels. And then, into a window of a cubicle on the ground floor of a new construction, the setting sun lights emptiness, capital exchanged for dark nothingness. A tree, once surrounded by designered paving, is now a many-splendoured stump. A plastic bag tucks into a handrail, its insides fogged by discarded dog dirt. Grander warehouses, maintaining some trace of industrial heritage, evolve into open-plan offices, cubbyholes of production companies, photographers, graphic designers, while worn estates full of fighting dogs stand parallel in time over the water: the old and the new eye each other, suspicious, on respective territories. Two bulked-up men seek gym beginners for their new venture round the corner. ‘What you photographing for mate, is it a project?’ ‘He’s a photographer, what do you think.’ Keen to pace territory between two bridges, they head westwards, their sales patter running ‘you got to beef up to stop the bullies.’
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