The roaring silence

The image above is from a series of pictures I produced about twelve years ago, called Man on Earth. In this series, I wanted to visualise a world less populated, where it was possible to stand deep in the heart of the metropolis, isolated and alone, and with a real sense of solitude. I wanted it to feel like a tranquil place, where there was space to breathe and time to listen to the ‘silence’.

At the same time, I wanted another possible interpretation to be made, one of fear, of loneliness and of alienation, where one felt cut-off from the world and abandoned. Ultimately, the viewer could draw their own conclusions about what they were looking at and intepret the images in their own way. To me, this is what producing art and photography should really be about, attempting to involve the viewer on a personal level, and trying to produce an emotional response in them.

The idea of the series seemed a little crazy at the time, that the vast and teeming modern city could change to the degree that it could become the opposite and resemble something more like an abandoned, post-apocalyptic world. Well, twelve years on, and with the rapid change in working practices since then, there are signs that this world could well become a reality. The city spaces that for generations have thrived and grown with the relentless march of industry and finance, are now seriously under threat from a different kind of ‘progress’ and one that will have a deep and irreversible effect on humanity.

Aside from the lasting effects of government interventions in enforcing lockdowns, the years since 2020 have seen a dramatic fall-off of the number of people who regularly travel into the city to work.
Tuesdays to Thursdays are now the busiest times of the week, and Mondays and Fridays feel more like the weekend, near deserted, as people stay away and work from home.

This has come as quite a shock to me. As someone who worked for many years in the city, and who has photographed it over many years, I have got used to the never-ending buzz and energy of the its streets throughout the year. It never felt like a place that might one day become near bereft of people, that was for my wild imaginings and the pictures of Man on Earth.

Another photo, which comes from a series that followed called Urbanites, featured the image seen here of a man and a pigeon. Two city dwellers that might, it seems, have more in common than one might first think.

It’s interesting to learn that, once upon a time, pigeons were regarded as useful beings. They were used as messengers, relaying important bits of information between people over great distances. People also raced them and they actually lived spoiled lives and were honoured companions. In fact, they were quite domesticated and would live in specially built cages in and around people’s homes. However, all this changed with the introduction of the telephone, when relaying messages to people became so much easier.

Unfortunately, by this time, the humble pigeon had lost much of its natural survival instinct which is why they largely live in cities with people, where they can beg for food. They were once our loyal servants but because of technological advances, they were discarded and now they have no purpose. Most people see them as nothing but a nuisance, as filthy, disease-spreading pests and we’d be better off without them.

After all, what’s the point of something being alive if it doesn’t contribute anything of value to the world? There time of usefulness is long gone.

Let’s stop and think for a minute if that same scenario could repeat itself, but this time with human beings as the ones under threat. What if ten years from now there was a significant group of people, working age people, for whom there seemed to be no meaningful task to perform? What if the job they had been doing for a number of years, no longer existed in the same way because it was being carried out by a
non-human - a machine?

Yes, of course, I refer to artificial intelligence (AI). We’re already seeing the amazing things that AI can do. There is ChatGPT, there is Suno, a music making app that can create the most convincing of songs and music with just the input of a few keywords. There is also Dall-E and Midjourney, two image creation tools that are unnerving photographers and image makers, and clearly a verbal AI will one day infiltrate so many professions - generating academic texts, essays, fiction and advertising copy, that it will deprive countless of people their position in the workplace.

If there is no work for these people, what will happen to them, will they too be discarded? Will they continue to have a value and a role in society?
We don’t know the answers to these questions, and likening people to pigeons is perhaps an absurd comparison but alarm bells are starting to ring in some people’s minds and silencing them is becoming much harder.

As for our cities, perhaps my imagination was running away with me a little when I created my series Man on Earth, or perhaps not.

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