Posted by
Ian Bramham (Manchester, United Kingdom) on 23 September 2007 in Abstract & Conceptual and Portfolio.

Do'nt you just love digital photography! - I was messing about in photoshop with this night shot that I took in the city a few months ago and tried a rather extreme b&w conversion of it, destroying any image quality in the process but leaving me with something that I found really interesting.

All of a sudden, quite unbidden on my part, those iconic images by Roy Schatt and Dennis Stock from the 50's of James Dean walking in New York City popped into my head.
http://www.hackelbury.co.uk/artists/stock/stock_pic06.html
http://www.jamesdean.com/about/photos/walking.htm
The title "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" came from an obscure link to Dean - so obscure that I won't bore you with it now, but I thought it suited the image.

There are also several songs by the same name but the lyrics to this version by Green Day are particularly beautiful. I'm not really a fan of theirs but Armstrong sure knows how to write :

I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and I walk alone

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
and I'm the only one and I walk alone

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone

I'm walking down the line
That divides me somewhere in my mind
On the border line
Of the edge and where I walk alone

Read between the lines
What's fucked up and everything's alright
Check my vital signs
To know I'm still alive and I walk alone

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
And I'm the only one and I walk a...

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone...

Lyrics by Green Day