L S LOWRY and clean streets

Had great day today went to the Lowry in Salford, a great building which not only looks whackey on the outside also looks brilliant on the inside.
Two exhibitions were on both showing pictures of Salford in the first half of the twentieth century.
One was photographs by Arthur Riley a brilliant artist and photographer who shot street scenes of the people of Salford. He had a good eye for the street children as he had been a teacher and produced a series of grubby black and white shots of Salford. It was a familiar scene to us because we had been in Moss Side soon after and we remebered the grot. We even lived in a block of flats imaginatively called Gretney Walk but inevitably rechristened Grotney Walk.
So in the light of this when we turned to Lowry's picture, they seemed incredibly clean, in fact the mills themselves, though dark are not dirty. The biggest shock is the streets themselves all white. Picture after picture white streets. Did he not see the grot? Did he chose white so that we would look at the people? Whatever, this was the vision he had, the white clean streets of Salford. Arthur Riley saw the grot. Which is the correct vision? Like most dilemma's the answer is no thesis and antithesis producing synthesis, but rather thesis and antithesis are both true.
Went to a council meeting tonight with a project causing controversy; which one was right? Both, either, neither?