When I first moved to London st the age of 13, I was a little terrified.

Everything was new, the city was big, loud with too many people that spoke a language that I barely understood.

As the days and the years went buy, I grew to know it and love it. I made life long friends, got to know myself and grew into someone that’s interesting.

As I got older, I got to know the dim side of it. It can be a terribly lonely city with everyone busy trying to create an ideal life for themselves.

But as I think more about it, the same can be said for any other cities. However, I’ve come to realise that the opposite is also true. This city is full of beauty, it is alive and full of surprises and intrigue. Yet many of us don’t have access to this beauty in our everyday lives. We all develop different relationships with where we live, we either love it or hate it depending on the experiences that we’ve had.

It is easy to believe that where we live is ugly without realising that it is a mindset. A mindset that’s guaranteed to leave a discontented feeling. We dismiss pebble – dashed semis in favour of a stone – built county cottage, yearn for a woodland view.

Everyone has the power to change this discontented mindset. Beauty is everywhere. It can thrive in the densest areas of any city.

There’s beauty everywhere in the architecture that we pass everyday on the way to work. There’s even beauty in the details of the architecture of our home. The angles of building joints, sunlight shifting across the facade, minute differences in the colours of bricks and stones.

Appreciating where we are rather than where we want to be can help im seeing what’s around us in a better light.

We can all get to know the so- called “ugly” in our environment and see the beauty writhing

Prints and Ebook available on my site:http://www.pamelaaminou.com/shop/