I am an independent photographer living in Cambridgeshire, UK. My work is predominantly project-based and the media used for each project is driven largely by the concept, so can vary between film and digital. The project submitted here is shot on digital and exhibited as 1188 x 420mm panels.
I have been developing this long-term project since 2007 based on Sigmund Freud’s essay, “The Uncanny”, of which the 9 photographic panels are a part of.
The “unheimlich” or its direct translation, the “unhomely” has many interpretations – its domestic representation expresses the psychological nature of man and beast within the domestic environment, with a nod to George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”. Freud writes about the uncanny, as something that once upon a time was hidden now becomes public and perhaps shouldn’t be and it is that darkness and fear experience between the hidden and the public that I wanted to explore.
This same concept of the hidden and exposed is explored in the photographic panels, predominately through nature – that there is an eery presence in nature, where the surface between what is seen/what we know and what is hidden/what we don’t know is in constant invisible flux. Here I chose to utilize the ‘3rd effect’ – by placing two seemingly random photographs together, their juxtaposition would highlight that fissure between the canny and uncanny in nature.
