"The Gloves are off!" - Round #01: Abandoned

"You are hurt and worn out"

Ayumi Hamasaki 

Goyte and Fourth Floor Collapse - "Worn Out Blues"

"The Gloves are off!", at least in Gersthof, the area of Vienna where I live. Wandering from my apartment to the local transport junction, has taken an intriguing turn in the last few months. Major trackwork, on the tramlines, has been going on and will continue until the end of September.  I touched on the work in a previous essay, titled "Nuts in May".

The photographic opportunities afforded by this work to shoot some intriguing and offbeat photo studies has been overwhelming. I could be writing on a variety of topics and sharing the better photos for months on this trackwork. The photos above, of work gloves caught my attention on different days and in different places.

Worn-out and abandoned, the pair in the first photo, shot on a rainy day, were left laying on a section of bare tracks undergoing work. For more than a week, I passed this pair, unmoving and undisturbed, exactly how they were first shot. During this time, I contemplated a number of scenarios for their abandonment - the sad, the bad and the ugly. They finally disappeared when the area was cleaned, as the final work, for that section, went ahead and the plinths, between the sections of track, were put back into place.

Nuts in May

"I'm tired of high policy talks. 

I want to focus on nuts and bolts."

Dave Freudenthal 

Edward Ka-Spel - Nuts in May

Well not the nuts of the old nursery rhyme, but rather nuts that go with bolts. Currently, Gersthof where I live, is going through a massive tram line maintenance process. Believe it or not, and this is not very girly, I am finding it fascinating. Whenever I pass the works with my camera, I take the time gathering some photographs.  

I have been experimenting with some rather arty shots, “gathering” these arty ones of nuts with their bolts. Not something that would be usually classed as beautiful, I found these ones strangely attractive in their collected form. All thrown together in a box, waiting to be used or recycled back into the track work, where they would then perform their designated function. 

"Puttin' on the Ritz" in Vienna - Street Art Stencils

Street Art - Stencils found in Gersthof - 2013

Fred Astaire - Puttin' On The Ritz

YouTube Source - fred l

A Paramount Pictures promotional photo-montage 

 "Puttin' on the Ritz" in ''Blue Skies'' (1946). 

Source: Wikipeadia

"I'm puttin'on my top hat Tyin'up my white tie Brushin'off my tails"

Irving Berlin

Fred Astaire - Top Hat, White Tie and Tails

I have become rather fascinated by the Street Art since living in Europe. In particular the form of Street Art delivered via the medium of stencils, some of which can be found in the area of Gersthof, located in Vienna, where I live. Every time I come across a stencil I haven’t seen or an improved image of one, (or a coal chutes for that matter), I just can’t help snapping them. 

Poor graffiti and Street Art does nothing for me, less than nothing when it defaces a building. Most of the stencil art in Vienna has been neatly applied to boring removable features of buildings, hydrants and telephone or electric junction boxes, that could do with a little uplift and can be easily cleaned. I do suspect the local council’s may not agree, but then again I haven’t witnessed a rush to clean any of them away, in this hyper maintained and very clean city.