St Paul’s trompe d’oeil
Posted by Aphra Behn on July 10, 2006
Too many words recently. By contrast here is a photograph I took on Saturday of St Paul’s Cathedral, complete with trompe d’oeil canvas covering the scaffolding while they do work on it.
It’s an art installation masquerading as responsible construction really, and I love the intelligence, sense of place and subversiveness of the thing.


not 
July 10, 2006 at 11:47 am
That is a FANTASTIC photograph. Brilliant. Quite apart from the trompe d’oeil, the black-and-white and the diagonals make it look wonderfully unreal and stagey-in-a-good-way.
I become immune to the visual strangeness (both self-conscious and accidental) of London sometimes. It’s good to have my eyes scrubbed clean from time to time.
July 10, 2006 at 6:37 pm
That’s kind of you Ag. I found the diagonal lines oddly upsetting too, in fact the whole thing has a mildly vertiginous feel, doncha think.
AB
July 10, 2006 at 11:34 pm
Superb photo. It took me a while to work out where you had taken the shot from. If that was up in April I walked around the back of St Pauls rather than the front and missed it!!!!!!!
Darn-a-tee-darn!
July 11, 2006 at 1:02 pm
Looking across the river from the Tate Modern towards St Pauls on sunday I was struck on how flat the dome looked from there.
Maybe the lighting, maybe the hangover, maybe the Kandinskys in the room I was looking from. Maybe the dome was flat and only I saw it.
A nice picture and well spotted.
July 11, 2006 at 6:35 pm
Thankyou Alfster and Phil, and what a treat to see you both here.