The first project depicts the thousands of corners of a borough, the second one presents a city through different categories, the third one displays different cities through one category, and the fourth one shows the life that surrounds a single corner every day over many years. The first three projects are real and the fourth one is fictional but not less plausible. It is certainly the most constraining given that not only space is considered, but time as well as everyday is important. It is also the most personal by involving the photographer to take his own shop in photo, which shows how an in-depth research project may measure everydayness. Further, the first three projects are on the move through the city while the fourth project is rather static. When comparing their methods, the second and third project make close-ups to mostly show city’s material and physical elements while the first and fourth project are particularly attentive to social life.

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Whereas there are some divergences among the four documentary projects, let’s now focus on their similarities. All four seek to observe and represent urban life through visual methods. Most importantly, their common ground is found in repetition, not one but 11,485 corners to analyse a borough, not one but dozens of categories being photographed to analyse a city, not one but dozens of windows to analyse dozens of cities, not one but thousands of mornings to analyse a corner. Further, all four researchers highly understand the relation between the process and result of their research by fixing themselves strict rules to attain a certain objectivity, avoiding being carried away by the subjective pursuit of beauty that would ruin their method. In these terms, the first and fourth project are more rigorous while the other two took some liberties in also caring for aesthetics. Although ones are more objective than others, they all realise fascinating results that could also be understood by the audience as thoughtful art works. Last but not least, these projects suggest other projects. Imagine capturing all corners of a city the same day at the same time. What about doing it at night rather than day light, in all four seasons, every five years. Imagine photographing doors rather than windows, all doors of a street rather than a city. With enough inventiveness and resources, projects of this kind are endless.

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In my project, I wanted to make coherent the details found in the chaotic information of Guan Zhuang street by classifying and analysing them in the following categories, from the most static elements to the most changeful: (1) Floors (2) Walls (3) Urban furnitures (4) Stores (5) Words and Images (6) Lights and Colours (7) Transports (8) People (9) Objects and Trash and (10) Nature. These universal traits of a city’s street might be studied in most urban environments, given that all streets have floors, walls, people, and when represented visually they will produce unique results of their local life, which are singular characteristics of their identity. Therefore, between summer and autumn 2020, after years of active contemplation, I started filming Guan Zhuang’s physical, social and multi-sensory environment to make a short film that tells a research, but above all a story. It does not take place in the entire street, but in the space between my home and work. Each shot is related to one of the early described categories, with sometimes more than one, as when we see floors in the front and cars or people in the back. At times, the same shot could perfectly fit in two different categories. The bright green of a tree, a plastic bottle on the floor, the light of a car, etc.

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Details do not show the street in large sight, but as these particles are brought together, they also show the street as it really is. When filming to access and investigating social life, the small things we see are much smaller than all that actually happens out there, but there are connected to the bigger urban landscape. An image showing a delivery guy resting and looking at his phone may implicitly symbolise all the delivery guys that I have seen in the past three years along that street. As such, images often reveal what is frequently seen. There may also be unusual events caught by the camera that barely happen every day, but they are few as I have tried to keep record on the mundane. Now, although most elements are seen repeatedly and seem identical from one day to the other, there are always variations that may be truly hard to report with the camera. Birds may not be the same, sunlight varies, blue shoes may be followed by red shoes seconds later and only the former will have been seen. As such, there are uncountable details that I have not recorded when they are actually there, or even details that need to be explained with words to understand the image. Also, I have seen more details through the lens of the camera that without it as I was fully concentrated in chasing them wherever they were hidden. The same happened while recording sounds as I could wait in a corner listening to them changing around me or I would look for them walking down the street. Nevertheless, a project of this scale may be enough to portray the street and give others a sensation of it, but not to analyse all with precision.

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Stories from Beijing was an Art project while Details of a Street is more analytical but still subjective in the choices made when filming and editing. A colleague who walks down the street everyday thinks that this is a rather unattractive and unimportant place of Beijing, and although he may be right, its apparent insignificance tells more about the city than what one may think at first sight. In reality, every found element is a significant detail that belongs to the street, as a window and a door may be details of a building or a freckle and a nail are details of the body. That street belongs to the city which is in turn found in that street and, without these details, neither would be exactly the same. By looking a little closer, the street tells a lot about intimate and public life. It has its expected cyclical changes, as birds are heard in spring’s early mornings and crickets in summer’s afternoons, trees lose their leaves in October, school gates are full of children and parents at certain time in the morning and afternoon, queues are longer in some shops in the morning because they serve breakfasts and some others in the afternoon because of their pastries or meats, there is more trash in front of the fruit shop in the morning after unloading, the street is covered in red during the national holidays, street corners’ floors turn black every time a family makes a bonfire to honour their dead, shops close with regularity and new ones open while few remain there for years. There are various degrees of permanence, as some elements may last unchanged for a longer time than others. People change too. I may see the same old man doing his physical exercises behind the bus stop until one day I may not see him anymore. Days change although they seem the same, and there will never be a 22nd of October 2020 again, which brings me back to the present. It is somehow tragical to think that one day I will move to another place, to another city, and I will not see this street anymore. I therefore want to capture how it remains now in reality and in my mind before it fades away. The twenty-minutes short film shown hereafter is the result of this introspective reflection, to make us look at our everyday streets in the details that make them special to then better grasp them as they are also part of us, of our identity.

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