The Street and Modern Life

“I love the street. I would not reveal to you a feeling of such intimate nature did I not consider, had I not reason to consider that this love, such absolute, such exaggerated love, is shared by you all. We are brothers, we feel alike, we feel akin in the towns, in the villages, in the settlements; not because we suffer from afflictions and irritations, the law and the police, but because the love of the street unites us, levels us, brings us together. This is indeed the unassailable, indissoluble feeling., that alone, like life itself, survives the ages and the eras. Everything is transformed, everything changes - love, hate, selfishness. Smiles are bitterer today; irony more painful. The centuries pass, slip away, taking with them the futile occurrences and momentous events. All that persists and remains, the ever-growing legacy of generations, is the love of the street.”

- Excerpt from A Rua (The Street) by João do Rio, 1905, Rio De Janeiro

We commissioned Hans Eijkelboom in 2013 to extend the work he had been making on the streets of capital cities across the world, from Rio de Janeiro to Tokyo and Birmingham.

To hear more about Han’s work in Birmingham watch an interview we recorded with him here and a slide show of the book here.

The Street and Modern Life was published by Dewi Lewis in 2015 and has been exhibited at Documenta 14 and Athens Documenta in 2017 and as part of a major retrospective of Eijkelboom’s work at The Hague Museum of Photography in 2018.

You can see more of Han’s work on his website.