Five Cities

Acclaimed British photographer Nicholas Sinclair here looks at five European cities – Paris, Istanbul, Palermo, Berlin, and Budapest – through their surface markings. Exploring the interaction between a city and its citizens as recorded by graffiti and advertising, Sinclair’s photographs occupy a place between documentary and abstraction – a scrawled word or the scrap of a flyer are at once physical scars on a wall and marks hovering graphically on the picture plane.

 

In this beautifully produced book, the second in a trilogy by Sinclair examining the surfaces of European cities, readers are invited to look at graffiti and other "unofficial" interventions anew: not as aggressive intrusions, but rather as part of an ongoing collaborative project to interpret the modern city.

Nicholas Sinclair is an internationally renowned photographer. His work has been widely exhibited and published. He was made a Hasselblad Master in 2003, and his work is in many major public collections. His books include Berlin: Imagining the Trichord.

Nicky Hamlyn is a highly acclaimed filmmaker and the author of Film Art Phenomena.