Four towels
I don’t know why I’m spending hours going through thousands of photos I’ve taken over the years, though it probably started when I was collating photos for the Alton Estate of Mind guide. Once I started, I was naturally drawn to similar photos, and typologies emerged. And though I have been posting series of photos for years (including objects and book and magazine and album covers and film stills), it’s only fairly recently I’ve been doing it regularly.
It might take years – decades even – to get a series of four similar photos (or it may take five minutes) and it’s mostly by accident that I realise I’ve taken a certain number (I haven’t consciously spent 20 years taking four photos of towels).
On their own each photo is pretty boring (though I must have taken the photo in the first place for a reason) but once in company, I think they become interesting.
I’ve posted before about London typologies, where previously-assumed mundane things such as road signs, launderettes and tube seats assume importance and interest when grouped together.
My books Alton Estate of Mind and Welcome to St. Decay both feature typological double page spreads, of a council estate and Cornish engine houses respectively.
Alton Estate of Mind (photos by Melanie May and myself)
Engine houses from Welcome to St. Decay
Previously on Barnflakes
London Red Roses
Top deck
Looking out the train window
Abandoned books
Some bananas
Some lemons
Alton spills
Abandoned umbrellas
Crystal Palace dinosaurs through the ages
Some cutlery
The icon shrines of Crete
London’s old shopfront mosaics and tiles
London typos
Reykjavik Fire Hydrants
Irish post boxes
Warminster wreaths
Abandoned phone boxes
Loss of the senses
Google ghosts
Hung out to dry
Cornwall’s ever-changing seasons reflected in flattened, rusty tin cans
Sex workers’ cards Gilbert and George style