Exercise: Juxtaposition

I went looking for this image yesterday when I travelled to the Salgado exhibition. Such images don't leap out of nowhere - there are found because we are looking properly. Standing around on the busy streets of London didn't seem to be doing the magic, but then the process of really looking began to pay off. Sure, there were some great images that came and went before I could get my camera to my eye, but this served to sharpen the work of seeing. What follows are some photographs that seemed, if only slightly, to speak of 'juxtaposition'.

I guess this is a fairly obvious example: dinosaur mingling with the crowds...  Yes, there  is some striking contrast between the architecture of the museum interior, but we are not fooled. We expect the skeleton to be there because it's the Natural History Museum and we know this dinosaur 'lives' in the main hall. It's like we expect the Royal Albert Hall to be in any publicity images of the annual Proms concerts just down the road. So - a decent attempt but it doesn't 'ring true'.

Now this image is getting there. I came across this head office for all-things British sculpture in the Old Brompton Road. I could see it some way off, drawn to the striking orange / red of the piece that resides outside the front door.nI made a few exposure but chose this one as the cyclist added an element of dynamism and action. So, yes there is a strong sense of juxtaposition, with the sculpture being the 'interloper' in this example. But it leaves me almost cold: the three elements of old building, contemporary sculpture and an oblivious cyclist are all together in the moment of exposure - but there is no story.

So my choice is this picture. It is a scene in a street behind Regents Street and it's a link between one street and another. Overhead, a large mirror forms part of the ceiling. This creates a visual event that is quite arresting. In it, we can just make out the couple in the foreground. They, dressed almost exactly the same, are still at this moment while it is the figure in the actual subway who is moving towards us, bringing with him the tension of not knowing what he will do when he emerges. So our attention is torn between the couple, their reflection and this striding figure. Were the mirror not juxtaposed above this subway, the relationship between reality and image would not have been born.