Civic Dreams

The creative act of noticing what you notice, Civic Dreams is an ongoing photo journal to explore composition, pattern-making, and my love for cities.

On the sidewalks of San Francisco, I had a curious attraction to these lines etched into the concrete to help the visually impaired. There’s one at every corner of every intersection, and each one is unique. It’s evident that they were made by a human with a hand tool following some set of standards and constraints; and each etching comes together in its own way with its cuts, cracks, stains, rain, litter and light. I enjoy the imperfection playing off of the regularity. I stroll by most of them, but every now and then I’ll come across one that catches me.

Like using a view finder, I play with cropping to suss out a composition. I see these as a material themselves, as urban tiles.