This week I created and recreated several photographic typologies of things around where I live.

Tools I used:

• iPhone 13 mini - to take the photos

• Google maps - to identify the 52s

• Eyes and feet - to get me to the 52s

• Darktable - a free alternative to Adobe Lightroom for batch photo editing

Context

I enjoy photography but easily get overwhelmed with what to take photos of, there is beauty in everything. Focusing on something specific, arbitrary or otherwise, for me is a limitation that encourages play and creativity.

Along these lines, many years ago I had fun making photo typologies - a series of photos with similar content or context arranged together to form a new image - I created a few of shoes, cars, and light switches.

I find it a great way to explore a place and start using my eyes and senses. We become more attuned to what we pay attention to. I decided to first recreate the typologies I did in Berlin years ago, and then add one based on the 52weeks theme.

Process

red cars in neukölln (2015)

red cars in mexico city (2023)

left shoes in my house (2015)

left shoes in my house (2023)

As I was taking photos of red cars, I saw a few number plates that had ‘52’ in it. My initial thought was to capture many cars with number plates containing 52. Instead, I decided to find houses with 52 as their street number.

Initially I wandered through the streets, hoping I would be at the right end of a street to be near numbers below 100. I soon discovered that this would take forever; there are many long roads and avenues with street numbers going into the 1000s and higher. Luckily, I was able to use the maps app to search and tag many 52s near me. This generated a treasure map of sorts for me to explore.

It was a fun few hours walking down small streets and dead ends. Many of the places didn’t actually have a street number on the building, or were blocks of flats that went from eg. 46-54, so didn’t have a 52 labelled, or just plain didn’t exist at all.

calle 52 (2023)

Bonus

red cars like to stick together (2023)

Learnings

• Getting out in the world and the streets is super refreshing

• Picking random and arbitrary locations to visit can reveal hidden gems just round the corner

Next steps

• Pick other arbitrary objects, or quirky things specific to Mexico City (maybe tacos de canasta stands )

• Get a more serious camera and play with manual settings

• Take a photo series at 4am, at dawn, and sunset