Playa Levante, Benidorm, Spain. June 2002.

Everyone needs a holiday, I guess. To be honest I always feel a little uneasy taking pictures on a beach as many people assume you’re just a pervert. Indeed they’ve made it illegal in Benidorm after too many pictures of topless women appeared on websites without the subject’s permission.

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.

The Spanish Synagogue, Prague. November 2003.

It seems there are some places so inspiring that even the Nazis couldn’t bring themselves to destroy them. Of all the synagogues in Prague this one has the most visual impact. It now houses an exhibition of artefacts from the Nazi period as a way of commemorating the thousands of Jews from the city who were murdered. The people with the slightly ghostly expressions are looking at the exhibition cabinets, and inadvertently adding atmosphere to my picture.

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.

Kapitulská, Bratislava, Slovakia. November 2003.

I had a very early arrival in the city of Bratislava and spent a few hours wandering the streets as night gave way to a misty dawn. Long before the shops and cafés opened (and I was ready to commit a mortal sin for a coffee) the city’s clerics began their daily routine – as well drilled as a ship’s crew at sea. One must wonder how long the societies of eastern Europe will remain so deeply religious, with the increasing influence of western secularism.