Blind Alley (Spain)
This alley is in La Vila Joyosa (also known as Villa Joiosa) which translates into English as The Jewel of a Town.
This alley is blind - which is to say that it ends in a wall and does not link with any other street. But it is blind also in the sense that there is no glimpse of the sky; the buildings are piled so high that they block it from view.
The buildings crowd together so closely that even the high sun of mid-summer cannot reach his fingers to the bottom of the crack, and all but the upper parts of the northern buildings are soaked in shadow. People watch from the balconies above. Walking here one feels as if one has left the joyous "jewel of a town" and entered into a slightly sinister world.
(Watercolour - 22 x 15" / 56 x 38cm)