There is beauty in the city is a photographic project exploring urban space initiated by Anna Francis and now managed by Glen Stoker.
Participants place a magnet bearing the text There is beauty in the city somewhere in their city and then send the image to the blog.
The magnet can then be left for another city flaneur to encounter.
See the blog or their Facebook group for more details.
There is beauty in the city - Leiden
was an exhibition of photographs from around the world which were displayed in a narrow strip across a shop window as part of an OPEN | Makers aan de Markt
studio residency at Aalmarkt 17, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Glen Stoker + Sonja van Kerkhoff selected the photographs for the first row from the There is beauty in the city - Leiden archive.
Selected photographs were by:
Victor Angelo
Jakarta, Indonesia
Chloe Arrowsmith
Stoke-on-Trent, U.K.
Julie Brixey-Williams
London, U.K.
Brutus Carniollus
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Bernard Charnley
Stoke-on-Trent, U.K.
Susana Lopez Fernandez
Berlin, Germany
Felicity Ford
Reading, U.K.
Paul Hanson
Grimsby, UK
Sophie Gibson
Liverpool, U.K.
Anna Hindocha
London, U.K.
Sue James
Whanganui,
Aotearoa | New Zealand
Tony Jones
Stoke-on-Trent, U.K.
Ella Klenner
Bad Oldesloe, Germany
Teresa Leung
Hong Kong
Yvonne Lo
Hong Kong
Iain Macleod-Brudenell
New York, USA
Juan Antonio López Martín
Hong Kong
Siobhan Tarr
Sydney, Australia
Emma Thackham
Liverpool, U.K.
Emily Tull
Ramsgate, U.K.
Marianne Richardson
Harlow, Essex, U.K.
Lester Kong
Stoke-on-Trent, U.K.
Jania Vanderwerff
Bellingham, USA
Wai Kit Lam
Hong Kong
The second row were photographs made by Leiden citizens and tourists which were added during the exhibition.
Each person was asked to supply a reason for the particular view or location of their photograph.
There was a lot of interest in the show by visitors but only five individuals managed to submit photographs taken in Leiden before the show closed.
These images were of a carving made by visitors from New Zealand, of a tourist's face, a view of a courtyard only visible to the outside from that person's office, of a canal view, and what you see on the right, here. A photograph taken at the top of a department store two buildings to the east of where the exhibition was.
The show was a juxtapositioning of global views and Leiden views.
This photo shows both the magnet bearing the text as well as the shop-studio I used in my city for the exhibition on the Aalmarkt, a street that has been a shopping location in Leiden since the middle ages. Here I am 'selling' not only the idea of beauty (the banner is huge and easily read from the other side of the canal) but that beauty is in the eye of the beholder as demonstrated by the diversity of the photographs displayed in the window.
More photos are here: sonjavank.blogspot.com