Suburban Tartarus
I've been trying out some ideas on a new project where I am shooting both outdoors and at night - two with which I'm completely unfamiliar. These images are based on an idea I've had floating around for a long time to do with the strange, other worldy, foreboding darkness in suburban areas.
When my family first came to NZ I’d never seen volcanic rock or really dark tropical plant life before, it was all very new and strange as the vegetation in the UK tends to be deciduous and comprised of light, sunny greens.
One evening we went to a dinner at the house of someone at my dads work. It was in one of Auckland’s central suburbs; an old damp villa with a big overgrown garden. I was outside with the other kids in the twilight and I noticed a part of the garden with overhanging branches, lush leaves, scoria rocks and an eerie presence. I was drawn to its gloom but also genuinely frightened of what might be there - not a monster in the traditional sense, but a dark part of the land.
Living in Auckland for many years I’ve noticed these places around the city and they always give me the same uneasy feeling as if the land is watching me or there is a thin place between worlds. You can see them not just at dusk or in the night hours but also in full sun during the middle of summer. They seem to sit apart from the rest of the landscape challenging you to come closer.
I wanted to try to capture the feeling of those places; the crossroads, the shaded banks of scoria, the streetlights over heavy trees, the uneasy suburban streets. And a presence caught out of the corner of an eye one night out walking alone.
