Photographs At Broadway

I went to the shopping center on Broadway for some RCA plugs and walking back took about 80 shots on the iPhone, mostly of the old brewery site which is in the process of redevelopment and other subjects along Broadway. I love that area for taking photographs but the old brewery half demolished as it is is particularly attractive. I know most people see such industrial urbanscapes as an eyesore but I love it - to me it is like a dystopian monster in a moonscape and I love that sort of thing. To me it is pregnant with the poetry of the city. By being so empty now it is as if it is full of ghosts of stories and speaks more of people now than when it was a busy working factory such a short time ago. I have intended for photography and painting for quite some time. 

It is a huge site but now it is largely leveled dirt with the core of the complex and the old chimney eerily alone in the center. It reminds me of Hopper. Hopper never actually painted scenes quite like this - it is a subject more typical of George Bellows, but the feeling of the emptiness in the midst of the city, that is pure Hopper. 

The second photo is actually off the brewery site on the other side of Broadway. I loved the scraggly old tree hanging on for life with just a few lonely leaves among the upper branches and twiggy bits. Of course we all know that as new apartments get built that the city council in its infinite aesthetic wisdom will see such a tree as a blight and replace it with something "pretty" and new with lots of leaves - a botanic version of the cult of youth. I must be one of the odd ones because I see such things as this tenacious old tree as pure beauty, but then, I am just an artist - what would I know about beauty?