The "universality" of the world's cities and "urban excess with weird narrative" are themes in Auckland-based Harvey Benge's photographic fruit salad of cities, including Auckland, Paris and Tokyo.
Benge provides no text or direction: wanting readers of his sixth book to be "authors" of the work, heis loath to give interpretations.
"I find my pictures to be often unintelligible to myself; rather, the pictures form the text, the explanation," he says.
In both conversation and his work he suggests cities are much of a muchness, while admitting his perfect cosmos would be a mixture of "Karekare and Paris".
Strangely heartless, the best of this collection has captured the mildly odd and downright peculiar aspects of inner-city life.
