I’ve seen some of Peter Downsbrough’s work before, most notably his bookwork ‘Two Pipes: Fourteen Locations’ but after my tutorial with Claude Closky he suggested I look at a number of artists and artworks, including two by Downsbrough.

The image above is called ‘Paris’, created in 1980 and part of a series called Low Light. I haven’t been able to find much written about Downsbrough’s work, so I don’t know if the line has been introduced by Downsbrough or exists as an object in the cityscape. However, what is interesting is the splitting of the space with the near vertical line, the title, referring to the iconic French capital, but picturing the mundane and how the composition challenges the viewer to consider what is being looked at, what is space before us.

In the series called ‘Bruxelles’ Downsbrough again uses existing ‘lines’ in the city to divide up his images (unlike Two Pipes which places objects in the space), most notably the posts of street lamps in a diptych and triptych.

So, as ever, there is nothing new under the sun in terms of my own work, but I feel it adds credence to the idea of working in spaces in the landscape and using introduced or existing ‘lines’ to divide up the space, create a naraertive and challenge the perception of the viewer.