BIRMINGHAM 2015
Photo
With this series of three photographs taken from the back of the bus station in the city of Birmingham, Paolo Topy evokes certain phenomena inherent to large, modern cities that can be hard to comprehend: indifference and solitude. Bus stations are built to shelter passengers for brief periods while they are waiting for buses, and to offer them a chance to rest. They were designed with care and good intentions, since their vocation is to provide a service. Yet surprisingly, they are the very places where solitude and indifference are the most perceptible. In these images, the transparency of the glass gives us the impression of finally seeing the truth, or in any case, the reality of daily life as it is lived in an urban environment. Human beings pass by alone, sit down alone, without noticing each other, without speaking to each other, in the context of a daily migration dependent on schedules, obligations, constraints, and of course, the stress generated by all of the above. Actual encounters, actual exchanges seem illusory, if not outright impossible. In the end of the day, these human beings passing each other by seem even more transparent than the glass itself. Their existence becomes ghostlike, spectral. They appear and disappear in a ballet whose choreography is identical every day. Only the photographer seems to be able to see, to see “them” within the anonymity of this place, and to bear witness to their existence, to how hard it is for them to be and to live. A hardship that these people passing by – who are also the very people whose attention Paolo Topy would like to catch with this work – may even wind up losing their awareness of, worn down as they are from the effort of protecting themselves from an ever more aggressive and inhuman environment.
Yves Peltier