Real Rural in the City

http://realrural.org/about

Lisa M. Hamilton has gone around California and photographed rural life, seeking out the ordinary and the everyday of the Californian countryside. Funnily, these scenes now decorate San Francisco's public transport system (BART trains) in an "ad-art campaign". The Real Rural website explains, '[t]he idea is to actually insert these rural places and people into the city, alongside their urban counterparts.'

I like the idea of bringing the rural space into the urban space, especially when it is done in a way where the photographs may almost become windows out of the confined train carriages, depicting a native yet strange scene. Often, it is only when you are reminded of the opposite that you begin to see and understand what is around you more vividly. (Someone has said this more eloquently but it escapes my mind at the moment) In bringing these images of the rural into the urban space, I think you can feel the essence of the city more urgently and see it more clearly.

Just imagine sitting on the London underground, where, instead of dull ads selling phone contracts or dating websites, you were surrounded by photographs of rolling hills, open skies and wide grasslands. How would that affect your experience of your commute?