Grime Stories 27 - Light and Concrete

For long-time readers, this newsletter is my notebook on the places that most people walk past without a glance.

For new readers: welcome. Grime Stories is where I look for beauty in the awkward corners of the city—the liminal, the unloved, and the raw.

I keep circling back to buildings and spaces that serve a purpose first and an audience second. Brutalism is a recurring theme, but it’s not about style; it’s about function laid bare.

St Denis, North Paris

On a recent school trip, I found myself standing in front of the housing estate at St Denis. Empty courtyards. Concrete towers that seem to hold their breath.

Les Espaces d’Abraxas, St Denis – A1 oil on board

Bofill’s 1980s social housing complex, caught in a fragile moment between night and day: empty courtyards, hostile concrete, and the glow of artificial light pushing back against the fading sky.

(I explored this estate in more depth, with extra images, back in Grime Stories #25.)

Experiments with AI

The rest of this issue veers into something new for me: three cityscapes generated with AI.

I’m curious about how these tools can bend and warp a city, but I’m also uneasy. My work has always been built on slow looking, collecting photographs, and walking streets until I know how a place feels. The AI images feel like shortcuts that trespass on the part of me that needs to wrestle with primary source material so integral to the creative process.

For now, I’m letting the tension stand. These three images are a record of that quarrel. They’re not meant as finished pieces, just questions:

Can a machine invent a city that feels true?

And if it can, does that matter?

Or is the point of my work the fact that I was there?

Let me know what you think, please in the comments

Thank you for reading Grime Stories.