How would you represent your home town?
Two Piers: click to see bigger.
Our local paper here in Brighton ran a competition a few years ago. Local artists were invited to create a poster image which somehow encapsulated the city*. It got me wondering - how do you represent something as huge as an entire city, with all its sights, sounds and smells, in a single picture?
The obvious solution, of course, is to depict a well known sight: if you were representing Paris, for example, wouldn’t your first thought be to draw the Eiffel Tower? But the most obvious choice is often also the most boring. Here in Brighton, I’d be hard pressed to find an original way to depict our best-known building, the Pavilion. Plus, I’d feel that I wasn’t doing service to the many other sides of Brighton. I wouldn’t be depicting Brighton as I experience it myself, either. Sure, I visit the Pavilion and walk past it most weekends, but it’s mostly a tourist destination.
On the other hand, without going for an image divided up into many small sights, you’re never going to be able to put everything about your home town down on the page. Clearly, a compromise needs to be struck.
How would you depict your home town? What’s the obvious choice, and what would be yours? Spill! This is also my way to find out where my readers live.
My picture might need some explanation for those who are not familiar with Brighton. When I first moved here, there were two splendid piers (remaining from an original three), the Palace Pier and the West Pier. While the Palace Pier still stands, and is home to fruit machines, karaoke contests and a big wheel, the West Pier suffered a series of disasters, ending in fire, and now all that remains of it is a black iron framework, standing a little way out to sea. I understand that even this is to be cleared away soon, so my poster design would not stand the test of time. However, I did like the idea of putting the one in front of the other, and you can, in fact, see them at this angle from the west of the beach. This is just a quick sketch really, done from Googled photographs, but it’s given me enough food for thought that I might try and do it properly one day soon. I guess I’d better hurry.
While I was drawing, I was also recalling the housing co-operative that I used to be a member of. It was named Two Piers. I suppose the meaning of the name will be lost in a few years’ time.
* Can I find an online example of any of the winners? No, I can not!
Posted: October 9th, 2007 under Subjects.
Comments: 4
4 Comments
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This is an interesting question to me because I live in a small regional city in Australia. It’s a pleasant enough place, but also quite bland. Thinking about how I’ve seen it portrayed in art, it’s all fishing boats bobbing about in the bay, limestone cliffs or people at the beach, so the sea must be the obvious choice for artists.
If I were going to do it? I suppose I might do the view from the end of my street: I live on a hill, so the view is a broad swathe of suburbia sweeping down to the sea - I think that’s a realistic depiction of the place. I could do the view from the beach, turning my back to the water and looking up at the houses, which look (if you squint) like a view from the Cinq Terre - that would be an unusual way of doing it. But I think I would go for a symbol of the city: the silver ball water tower of a former clothing factory. It dominates the skyline and the factory itself was an icon (it was a co-operative owned by its staff).
I love that silver ball. You absolutely MUST draw it right NOW!
A mosaic of photos that I have taken in our village:
More here.
Yeah, okay, my medium here is photography and the computer rather than a fine art medium, but I like it….
Actually, I have photographed a few iconic places in my time. Some of the photos are in this collection of flickr sets including the nearest larger town called Horsham and even Seattle, WA, USA.