I am immensely indebted to the reader of my blog who compared my photograph of Tate Modern from the roof of St. Paul’s to the work of Alvin Langdon Coburn.   It has compelled me to look at his work and read about his career.   Of course, she is right in that Coburn became famous partly for his misty view of cityscapes, views of New York seen from the top of a skyscraper, Fifth Avenue from the St. Regis (1905) and The Octopus (1909) showing Madison Square abstractly from above, published in his book New York in 1912.   In London, he photographed St. Paul’s from the bottom of Ludgate Hill with the steam train going past, and again from across the river, and the dome of the National Gallery occluded by the Landseer lions.   I am not conscious of being influenced by his aesthetic of intense pictorialism, but am flattered that someone should think there might be a relationship.