I make photographs that play on the blankness of liminal areas of the industrialised world and re-interpret them as profound yet completely flawed monuments of some kind. The pictures seem to offer access to a sublime experience that can never completely stand up to the scrutiny of the viewer because on some level we are aware that the images are constructs; both in terms of their very nature as photographs and because they have been heavily manipulated.
Although exotic locations are not fundamental to my work; I do find that travel offers a certain sense of dislocation, both to the viewer looking at the final work, and myself whilst making it. Working exclusively at night is another device that I use to this end, in addition to the computer which allows me to create abnormally distilled compositions and an almost model-like surface texture in the images, which then seem to offer the viewer something which is familiar, yet wholly not-so at the same time.
The sublime experience that the images apparently give us access to is ultimately enfeebled by the suggestion that everything is not in its right place. In making these images there is a clear attempt to resolve a latent ‘spirituality’ with the firm secularism with which western culture approaches life. The work therefore, is rooted in the Romantic. As we acknowledge that the work is a construct, we come to understand that the otherness that it shows us is not out there in the world, but in our potential to experience it.