I went out today intending to take some street photography pictures documenting "the decline of civilisation" where I live. My rule was going to be, no poor porn, no pictures that are obviously political, just pictures showing how badly things are deteriorating. My camera never even made it out my bag. Every picture would have been poor porn or political. At 12am during a weekday, the place was full of drunks, junkies, suspicious looking creeps, beggars and apparently disabled people (with walking sticks or mobility scooters). Half the shops were boarded up and the rest were a mix of shops for specific ethnicities (Indian, polish etc), vape shops, Turkish hairdressers or Chinese nail bars. All the classic stores and cool niche shops are gone. I also felt very threatened, and I'm not exactly a timid person, but there was a horrible atmosphere about the place. The crumbling buildings, failing infrastructure, dirt, litter, lack of investment and cheap pointless "art installations" didn't come close to comparing to the wasted state of the people. Any pictures i took would have been sad and depressing, and I didn't want that, I was hoping to show a sort of "people thriving in the face of adversity" feel, but no, it would just have been people deteriorating in the face of abandonment. I havent given up, but next time I'll go to more of a tourist place, or business area, where I won't feel I'm about to get mugged and, hopefully, I can tell the story without it being a completely soul crushing horror.