The Undesigned City 10 Print

The Undesigned City series captures the unintentional abstract art created by the growing, crumbling city. Cities like Shanghai spend billions of dollars on design, construction, and architecture to make a visually pleasing space. While any casual visitor can be impressed by those achievements, I am more fascinated by undesigned and beautiful vignettes, cracks in the walls, multiple layers of peeling paint, brick, plaster, and asphalt combining to form unique pieces of art. As I hunt decisive moments in street photography, fleeting moments of beauty and humanity within the glitzy electric city of Shanghai, the center of finance and technology and modernity in China, I can't help but notice the infrastructure upon which the city is built. The iconic modern skyline and famed architecture, up close at sidewalk level, are revealed to be aging beauties with layer upon layer of paint and tiles covering bricks and plaster and metal and more paint. The buildings have stood the test of time, watching strong and silent through monumental shifts in politics and fortune over the last century. Their lasting scars show another side of beauty and humanity, and Shanghai's desire to patch up, repaint, and preserve what they have in the guise of something new. This image was shot in the downtown core, in a growing "dead zone" between the historic riverside Bund and Jing'An District, the wealthiest district in the richest city in China. Most shops in this abandoned area have closed down, residents have evacuated, and nobody knows what the next reincarnation of this hot real estate location will be. I used a Fujifilm X-T4 with a 23mm lens.

Print:Giclee on Photo Paper

Size:8 W x 12 H x 0.1 D in

Size with Frame:13.25 W x 17.25 H x 1.2 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.