Yet another attempt at working with the peculiar relationship of these two buildings in Philadelphia that are so ripe for development.

The famous City Hall is often dwarfed by the tall buildings and I have presented a few in recent weeks in joiner format. This one is a bit more sinister due to the wall of windows in the foreground with some oddly distorted ones shaking it up a bit.

I don't dislike this modern effort, which I think is the Municipal Services Building. I am a fan of so called Brutalist architecture of the sixties and the seventies. The name has its origins in Beton Brut, the French name for concrete, but has those overtones of something brutish in the grey coarseness of the material in such blindingly unforgiving forms. And for whatever reasons they tend to make an urban wasteland of whatever lies beneath. I don't know why they should do that but they do. It's like they built them with nowhere to sit.

Even though it doesn't cast the old building in shadow, you rather feel it does, metaphorically. As the images are taken from a height we get a sense of the empty urban landscape. In a city this large and a place so central things seem to stop. I can't remember now if I added a couple of floors to the top so that it should fill up the front of the image

I have another one in black and white of the lower area where some homeless people were hanging out and skateboarders playing. I might incorporate it sometime. As it feels a bit like arty tourism revelling in other people's misfortune, using their lives as scenic proprs, I feel a little uncomfortable doing that kind of image myself. Hence, in this one, they are not to be found. They have been erased. Don't know which is worse.