I do not believe that humans have developed a sympathetic or synergistic relationship with the cities they passionately build. Enclaves of identity, bastions of activity, cities are, in contemporary times, behemoth-like organims that must be fed, have their circulatory system, and often spread, not unlike a type of virus, slowly devouring everything that lies at their edges, even when natural impediments such as mountains or seas devise a border, cities will find their way, like a glacier that carpets and dissolves those boundaries. Mexico City, Tokyo, Paris (with the belt of banlieues tightening and tightening), and every other metropolis spreads its blanket. When a river gets in its way, like the isthmus of New York, it tentacles outward with ferries, bridges, and other infratructure the tows the larger land mass outside its reach to it, connecting to it, creating an expansion of terms and geography.

It might sound as though I distrust cities. I do not. I distrust the human ambition to build without understanding the effect it has or why it attracts a need for progress. Raise one building, create another, expand upward for habitation and downward through bedrock for transportation. In all respects, the human engineering mind is something incredible to study, and yet these cities, these organisms, are fraught with tension. There is the crime, the sanitary issues, the heave of shit out of which it is ushered, spilling into waterways and seas. There is the frenetic pace, life built on rails, moving as fast as possible towards what? There is a naive notion that cities are the epicenter of cultural production and that all things worth noting occur there. We think of cities in much the same way as we think of religious sites.

They are places in which to make our pilgrimage. It is without exception that if well-heeled enough, many people will have visited these complex and mutating, jagged, and exaggerated representations of place. On the rare occasion, we see them as biblical, particularly when their body politic is disrupted. There is the Babel association, the towering and confusing build-up of people with a hive mind purpose, who are then dissembled and given tongues that no longer work in tandem with their fellow towerbuilders  Then there is the Sodom and Gomorrah effect of such places when they become vice-ridden, disorienting, without moral cohesiveness, a hot bed of hellish discontinuity. And yet, like a moth to a flame…

I often think about cities, having lived in them before relocating to a much less chaotic environment in a mid-European country. I find it’s frequently challenging to critique one place thoroughly while living in it. One can observe the more microscopic workings of its disorder, such as traffic jams and street closings, as well as areas where access is possible and others where it is not. However, I am conflicted about whether a person can truly see the challenges of a place from a holistic viewpoint while living under its canopy. I believe it is hard, unless a removal, however temporary, is employed, to see the organism for what it is and isn’t. I visit cities frequently and still enjoy some of them. In some ways, they entertain all. Their pacing is akin to living inside a video game, with swift movements and judicious street maneuvering, and all appetites are satisfied. One feels less dull in a city, as all the senses are engaged. There is a mix of fight or flight, even in managing the crosswalk. There is a sense of exhilaration that leads the city dweller to believe they’re an active person, living their lives out in the thick of it, that less would be to underperform, living a life of mediocrity. This is, of course, one of the city dweller’s fallacies.

I recall the life I led during the COVID pandemic, outside of a central metropolitan area. I had relative freedom, could walk outside, and breathe fresh air. I did not need to bootlick a government official via text to get groceries or ask permission to let my dog (didn’t have a dog) out to piss on the roses. I remember the experiences of my friends stuck in their tiny flats, managing to get through, but not without some anxiety. This anxiety was amplified by protests, black Lives Matter, the murder of George Floyd, and further abroad, the protests in Hong Kong. There was something electric in the air, and it felt like a tipping point for city living in general terms. Many people have left the cities for these reasons.

In referencing the Hong Kong protests, or the Other Name protests, as they were called, which allowed the extradition of Hong Kong activists or agitators to be sentenced in mainland China, an erosion of the notion of the one country, two system policies, I am building a bridge to the photobook When I feel down I take a train to the Happy Valley by Pierfrancesco Celada, an italian artist who lived in Hong Kong for eight years before returning to Italy as the protests were kicking off. The book explores cities under disruptive policies and unrest, capturing the atmosphere of the time through insightful investigations of sequencing and the uncanny sense of empty streets. It also examines the queer perplexities of these maze-like citadels of glass that draw us in the 21st Century. It suggests cities, metropolis life, an eerie place full of blind corners and matchstick moments of build-up that can ignite and erupt at any given moment, as it did through 2019-2020, with aftershocks stretching into the following years.

There is an uncanny and unnatural presentation in Celada’s book that is restrained but surfaces unexpectedly between images of Hong Kong, its Bund, and waterfront, which appear more benign. It is the photos stuck between these moments, often taken at night, that mark the powder keg of the times more vividly with protests, police, and people living amidst ripped-up cobblestone artillery that dislodge the viewer from an otherwise series of beautiful, phenomenon-driven imagery. These colorful images are further divided by passages of black and white photos, deftly delivered on a different paper, their grain and stretched imagery offering the antithesis to the daytime and saturated images that provide a return for seeing HK as an enigma. The anxiety, the sleep of reason inexplicably producing real-life monsters, is ushered in through these passages, offering a different way of reading the confluence of things Celada finds appealing about his eight-year home and the disruption they are undergoing during this time. The book is comprehensive, and some of the more enigmatic images I requested for this post are truly inspiring. The original press pack, viewer, be warned, is lighter. I am drawn to Celada’s images, which are mercurial yet convey a sense of threat, whether through guesswork, ripped posters, stains, or the photos of the protests themselves. That being said, I believe the edit and sequence are powerful, despite my desire for more nighttime imagery and more destabilizing pictures.

I highly recommend this book. A subset of people has been collecting and aggregating photobooks about protests, as exemplified by Flashpoint! Protest Photography in Print, 1950-Present: The 10×10 photobook on protests, released last year. Before that, Steidl released the Protest Box, which features facsimiles of Japanese photobooks from the 1960s and 1970s. But the work that is truly being undertaken on the matter is Luciano Zuccaccia’s Protest In Photobook website, which catalogs the enormity of the project with significant international holdings of said material, for which I am sure Celada’s book has already found a home. I recommend Celada’s book first for his control in producing an alluring sequence, followed by his images, then the notion of how cities function, and lastly as a protest book, in that order. There is quite a bit on offer here, and if one wants to see it as political. Celada’s book is highly recommended.

Pierfrancesco Celada

When I feel down, I take a train to the Happy Valley

Muddyisland