One of my favorite features of the urban landscape is the alleyway. Whether narrow and infested, or secretive and alluring, the alleys are the link between the image a city is built to convey and the truth inside its soul. Alleys are the playgrounds of shadows, snowdrifts, windtunnels, and fog; they can be ten degrees warmer or cooler than just around the corner and can be the first or the last places to see the weather shift. Sometimes they are safe havens, and sometimes they are just the place you wouldn't want to run into an enemy--they surround you and lock you into whatever extreme of danger or security. Clostrophobic or comforting. Short-cuts or dead-ends. Windows onto the next street or dark, never-ending tunnels.
The picture above is a damp, sparkling, magical alleyway in Bushmills, Northern Ireland. It leads into the next courtyard and on to another world. This alley is pure Ireland--lush, old, thick, green, and sprinkled with fairy dust. I passed it alone on a rainy afternoon and, rather than trespass, I stole a picture. Part of me wishes I had gone in, just for a moment--and yet the reality of the next street over could never really be what the alleyway makes it out to be. That's the trick of the alleyway. It makes what is normal into something momentous. It shades on the bright days and shines on the dark ones. It leads into the soon, the coming, the next...
It makes place into movement and movement into place.