shewhomust | Truth in advertising

The picture on the left is a poster displayed on Durham station, where I have had plenty of time to contemplate it, growing steadily more bewildered. If it isn't immediately clear why, it may help to compare it to the scene on the right, or to click through to the larger versions on Flickr.

Exhibit A is an advertisement for Durham's new Radisson hotel. "Nestled" according to its web site "on a lovely bend of the River Wear" (between the Passport Office, widely recognised as the ugliest building in Durham, and the sewage works) it is naturally being promoted on the strength of its position, looking along the river to the cathedral and castle. And it isn't pretending to be photographically accurate, it's an artist's interpretation.

At first I thought that the interpretation amounted only to bringing the hotel and the cathedral closer together - the sort of trick that the eye plays, anyway, so that you point your camera at something which seems to dominate the scene, and then realise, looking later at the photograph, that it was actually quite small and insignificant. And the picture has been flipped to its mirror image, for some reason that is not apparent to me.

It wasn't until I went out to take Exhibit B, the photograph on the right showing the scene as it actually is, that I realised Exhibit A is more than a simple reversal. The gable end of the hotel which is pictured toward the viewer, displaying its name, is in reality the end nearer to the cathedral, not further from it. The bridge, too, has been prettified, though this is hard to see in the small images. At full size, it's quite clear that the brutal concrete span of Milburngate Bridge, with its load of traffic has been replaced by an attractive arched structure. I read this as a generic historic bridge, replacing the modern one;

durham_rambler suggests that Milburngate Bridge has simply been omitted, and what we see is Framwelgate Bridge beyond. He has a point.

All this makes some sort of commercial sense. What I really don't understand, though, is what has happened to the castle and cathedral. A gap has appeared between them, and the shock of this separation has caused the castle to crumble into ruins - random points of light are visible on its silhouette. But if the castle has been drawn by someone who has never seen Durham Casle, the cathedral has been drawn by someone who has never seen any cathedral at all - it has sprouted a couple of extra towers - unless... Actually, looking again, the silhouette of the cathedral might just be what you would draw if you saw a not very clear picture (rather like Exhibit B, in fact) and were not aware that some of the huddle of masonry was actually the castle between you and the cathedral (and then had to invent a castle, because you couldn't see one in the picture). This doesn't explain the rows of tiny lights, like the windows of a tower block at night, but it's the best I can do.

Thank you. I feel better for having got that out of my system.