Tales from the Loop: Repeating the Walk
Chapter Three: A Black and White Photo Series Inspired by Georges Perec
The Search for Meaning in the Mundane
Returning to The Loop.
I was still looking for meaning—a story or theme that would connect with me personally. In the past, I’ve focused on how seemingly banal locations can hold a vast amount of history, both good and bad, that isn’t visible at first glance. Joel Sternfeld’s book On This Site was a huge influence on me early on. It taught me to question the beauty of a landscape and to ask what stories might lie beyond the surface of the image.
As I sat at my desk, looking through the early images from The Loop, I began to notice a contrast: the difference in mood between the daytime shots and the second set, taken at night. I created a square crop and a black and white preset for the night images, then applied it to the first shoot. Seeing the images aligned in tone and format gave them a shared visual language. I didn’t know it yet, but this was the beginning of something. I just didn’t know what.
“Looking at a black and white photograph, you are already looking at a strange world.”
—Joel Sternfeld
A few days later, I returned to the loop again—this time in the late afternoon, around 3pm. The day was grey and overcast. The sun had fought and failed to break through. The air was damp, though it never quite rained. The diffuse light shifted the atmosphere, making the space feel off-kilter. It was as if the unsettling mood of the night had crept into the day—less threatening, perhaps, but still heavy with a sense that you shouldn’t linger too long. I took a few more images and moved on.
How Georges Perec Inspired My Photography
In my search for a clearer thematic for the project, I was recommended a short book: An Attempt to Exhaust a Place in Paris by Georges Perec. In it, Perec documents the mundane and often overlooked happenings of life from a café window overlooking Saint-Sulpice Square. He questions why we are drawn to the “big event,” the catastrophe, the extraordinary—how “daily papers talk of everything but the daily.”
“What happens when nothing happens?”
For three days, Perec wrote down everything he could see: people walking by; buses and driving-school cars; pigeons scattering in unison; a wedding, then a funeral at the church in the square; signs, slogans, and symbols; and eventually, the darkness that absorbs it all.
His quiet observation of one place over time struck a chord with me. It offered an alternative approach: one of patience, of repeated looking. It gave me permission to explore the everyday without waiting for something dramatic to unfold. Repetition didn’t mean exhaustion—it could mean discovery. Rather than draining a place of meaning, returning again and again might reveal what lies beneath.
Walking the Same Loop: A Visual Experiment
By this point, I’d already walked the loop three times. Inspired by Perec, I decided to see how this method could be translated into my photographic process. Could I exhaust this place photographically—not by draining it, but by revealing its overlooked rhythms?
So The Loop became an experiment in slow observation.
My Process: Repetition as a Creative Tool
I set out a plan to test this theory:
Walk The Loop as much as possible
Vary the time of day
Walk in different weather conditions
Walk alone and with other people
Observe patterns and rhythms in the environment
Work within creative restrictions:
Square crop
Black and white
Let the banality of repetition guide new ways of seeing
Use the limitations to clarify my vision
The idea was to shift focus—to move from the “hunt” for a good image toward a more meditative state of looking. Let the loop reveal itself.
Why Photographing the Everyday Matters
Years ago, when I was in a band and hit a creative block writing music, I had a method: I’d dump out all my Lego and sort the bricks by colour. Sitting on the floor, doing something repetitive and tactile, would let my brain relax and wander. More often than not, I’d have a eureka moment mid-sort, pick up my guitar again, and find the song’s missing piece.
Maybe this loop—this daily walk and photographic repetition—was my new version of that Lego trick.
A quiet way to spark something unexpected.
If you haven’t read the beginning of the series, check out: Chapter One: Finding the Loop and Chapter Two: Into the Shadows
