Detective

Detective is part of Opie’s Walking In London collection which features prints of different people from a wide variety of professions in transit, walking from one place to another during their working day. Opie does not capture these people at work, doing the interesting things the titles of the prints suggest they do. Instead, Opie chooses to depict these people when they are doing the most banal of activities, walking. Speaking about his representation of the ordinary and everyday, Opie explains: “mundane things are just as exciting as all the things you might imagine escaping into”.

The figure in Detective is rendered in Opie’s unique visual style, characterised by his use of simple forms, thick outlines and blocks of flat colour. Opie duplicates the man’s legs and blurs them which produces an illusion of movement and gives the impression the detective pictured here is in a rush.