Barrio Mercado, Valencia, Spain. February 2002.

Spanish cities have an extraordinary texture to them, like a well worn leather jacket. They’re comfortable, you can see the evidence of the passing years. The patina of age, I believe the antiques people call it. This patina is very fragile however, and with more money to spend many Spanish authorities have revamped their cites to disastrous visual effect. It’s like someone taking away your old leather jacket and giving you a new one – it’s all very well, but it’s just not the same.

St Martin-de-Londres, Languedoc, France. September 2003.

So many places in the south of France give me the feeling that intense human habitation over millennia has produced buildings that, although separate from the landscape, grow out of it. Nothing in this picture came from more than a few miles away from this place, but only humans could have cut and arranged the stone to create something that, with the addition of the extraordinary natural light of the region, becomes magical.