A phoney ersatz existence

I thought that once a week I would introduce a sort of “photo essay” to act as a discipline so that I think more about images and how they can be linked to words. I need to work harder at the technical aspects of photography – above all I need to read the handbook of my new digital camera (I never have much patience with handbooks, and usually just fumble my way through things). Another memo to myself is to be more assertive about asking people if I can photograph them, since this weblog is about people, if it is about anything.

This assortment of pictures is on the theme of development (a new development, near where I work). The city is reaching out ever further into the countryside, and blighting everything it touches. The real world is disappearing, and being replaced by a phoney ersatz existence that has no relationship with the surrounding environment, or its history and traditional way of life… Aldous Huxley in Brave New World described a nightmare future – all the more alarming because it had been packaged in bright and attractive forms that appealed to mass consumers.



The first thing to be built was a shopping mall with a giant Tescos. In the past villages and towns would be built around churches and cathedrals. Now shopping has become the new religion.