Urban Echoes

Photography & Poetry Diptych by Laura Dill
(16in. x 18in.)

“Urban Echoes

She is the Bold City
of the South.
Edgy.
Of the moment.

Leaning forward,
with one foot lifting
toward tomorrow,
the other rooted
in time.

Concrete and glass
ripple across her façade,
gentle as rain on a still pond.
Restless echoes
in tidy rows.

Light does not take
sides, moving through
old iron and new glass
alike.

©Laura Dill, November 1, 2026. All Rights Reserved.

Artist Statement

As a neurodivergent person, I have always approached the world from alternative perspectives, so much so that my Instagram handle and art Gmail are both “Perspectvz.” In prior careers, I found side doors when the front door was stuck. As a photographer, I’m fascinated by capturing the overlooked story and revealing the extraordinary hidden in the everyday. That is what I love about street photography.

I’ve called Jacksonville home for 36 years, and I’m still peeling this onion. My Urban Alchemy series of street photography and ekphrastic poetry diptychs is built from walks through downtown Jacksonville’s Urban Core. The same streets, the same light, seen twice. Each pairing asks what happens when the elements of a city (steel, glass, concrete, stone) are caught in a moment where they stop behaving like material and become something else. The poems that accompany the photographs are not captions; they are a second exposure of the same instant, an attempt to hold in language what the camera held in light, before the city moves on.

In a city of glass, nothing is only itself. My diptychs Urban Alchemy and Urban Echoes explore how buildings engage with their neighbors’ reflections, becoming part of each other’s stories. Urban Echoes invites the eye to dance among the layers sharing the frame. It begins with a historic iron lamppost against a new glass tower, but as you step deeper into the image, the tartan stripes of concrete and glass recede, and you revel in the ripples of the second tower against the serene field of sky-blue glass. Then you realize much of what appears in front of you is behind you. The poem paints the final layers of your journey, or perhaps you started there.“

Artwork purchased online can be picked up AFTER the exhibit ends, on or after November 29, 2026 — or shipped to the buyer (ALL SHIPPING COSTS TO BE PAID BY THE BUYER).