Nick Taylor and Squint/Opera Studios

Nick Taylor, creative director and the company Squint/Opera wanted to portray a London of the future, after today’s environmental doomsday predictions have played themselves out. This realization of a London taken back by the sea is curiously Utopian – we see life carrying on, and people still finding moments for creativity and enjoyment.

The five images of ‘Flooded London’ are snapshots of people’s lives some time after the catastrophe, obliquely depicting adaptations to a near-deserted urban environment where an office block like Canary Wharf is a place to go fishing and a street in Honor Oak turns into a slipway. The catastrophic side of the sea coming in has long since past and the images are snapshots of people going about their lives, having adapted to the city’s new circumstance.  The images are reminiscent of Norman Rockwell’s illustrations that glorified American life.  These images can become eerie in that it seems like we are being sold the alternative:  “Embrace the apocalypse, it won’t be that bad,” these images seem to exclaim.

Squint/Opera, an award-winning film and media studio which produces films, animations, web sites and installations, used photography, 3D modeling and image manipulation to imitate the techniques and aesthetic of Victorian landscape painters. Exaggerated details play with scale to present images that conceal their composition.

Group’s site: http://www.squintopera.com/

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