Over the weekend in January I went to the Urbis in Manchester and saw an exhibition by photographer Andrew Paul Brooks. It's called "Reality Hack: Hidden Manchester". 14 photographs altogether depicting the hidden underworld of the city, many taken in restricted and often dangerous places. Throughout the exhibiton we find that there's a whole secretive society that purposefully put themselves in danger to explore the urban underground. The images themselves are extremely detailed, almost hyper real and quite distorted, as there is alot of distortion it has led me to think that Brooks has taken a few shots of the scene and stitched them together. It seems a great deal of thought and time has gone into the works. They are such a contrast to the busy metropolitan city we know and love, no dodging, weaving, ducking or diving of hundreds of people, just tranquility. My favourite photography was called Quiet Refuge (below), I'm not entirely sure why, it feels quite romantic and reminds me of the Moulin Rouge in Paris, it's probably the red colour, but there is also this sense of the romantic notion of forbidden fruit in that he shouldn't really be there. As it stands I feel I've seen more of hidden Manchester than the unrestricted Manchester, I guess sometimes, I have my eyes closed when I walk around, maybe I should try opening them, stop and take a look around.
http://www.andrewbrooksphotography.com
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