Stories from the alley is a collection of real and fabricated images that reveal the role alleys can play in the sensual imagination of the city. The alley grows up from the people and the land; it is not trying to be anything. Originally created as a place to hide utility — it has fallen into disuse. And this disuse is precisely what makes them so important and compelling. They offer the transgression of a non-functional space in a society that is bent on trying to extract use value out of every last thing. These corridors run through the rationality of the city, and perhaps contrast it in the same way that the forest in a Grimm fairy tale sets itself up against the village. It’s a little bit dark and overgrown; there are tangles of root and branch; and the characters have to go there in order to experience the crux of the story. It’s a place of desire, danger and transformation. What happens when we dream in these spaces? Or when we allow them to dream into us?
