The Valley
Focussing on ideas of home, place and stillness, The Valley is a cinematic exploration of my immediate surroundings. This work forms an observational project, cataloguing quiet places of interest while exploring the relationship between a home, an environment and my own life.
As a result of 2020’s global events, restrictions were placed on my travel and engagement, leaving the majority of my time spent within a small radius. This series has been a reason to leave my home, and a personal exercise in expanding ones idea of the domestic. Growing up in this space, I hold childhood memories of my schooling, family and other major events that have occurred throughout my life. This series has allowed me to reconnect with my home and escape the increasing routine of day to day living.
Over time I have been numbed to the areas that I have seen time and time again, all of my life. There is a lens of indifference that has developed, ignoring the minor changes, akin to being a passive entity within my own travelled space. As a result, over the course of this work I have retraced my steps to embrace a childlike curiosity, an alternate mindset promoting experience as opposed to outcome. In light of this, I have developed The Valley to be shaped by the surrounding environment, and my interactions with it.
This work attempts to find a balance between the alien and familiar, by contrasting sterile, clinical properties found in the industrial and commercial sectors, with the warmth and relatable imagery found in more residential areas. It intentionally draws on cinematic references such as ‘Nightcrawler’ by Dan Gilroy and ‘Only God Forgives’ by Nicolas Winding Refn, as I have both an interest in this style of imagery, and feel that it forces a respited perspective. This in turn presents a solemn tone both pertaining to present circumstances, and the memories attached to the places that I have photographed.
I have found that there is a vulnerability to being alone, sometimes the cold, other people, or purely the silence. The quiet personally provides a place of reflection, it empties my mind and allows me to focus on the task at hand or the setting that I am experiencing. In a way this stillness can be intimidating on our own. The Valley, offers a space of shared reflection, relational through our own experiences of being alone in a foreign environment.
Its softcover form allows the reader to have ownership over the book, offering a safeness to explore these unfamiliar places. I intended for the work to be of an inviting form, something unimposing, that could be picked up and put down at any time. Although there is a rhythm and flow to the images, the book can be viewed at any point, a single photograph, or a small collection with every image pointing back to these ideas of home, place and stillness.
