4Corners Favourite

In September 1981 Heaven 17 released their debut album, ‘Penthouse & Pavement’, featuring a cover illustration that (ironically) celebrated a new corporate world of high technology and high finance. There’s something in Claudio Cassaro’s image of Mingzhu Park in the Lujiazui Financial District of Shanghai that reminds me of that iconic cover. A clean, bright, shiny new high rise world with outdoor escalators, waterside pavilions and purposeful men in sharp suits, the whole environment geared to one pursuit: making money. The fact that the shot is from Shanghai rather than Phoenix or Frankfurt only adds to the shock of the new.