Adhering to the rules of candid street photography, I often 'build' shots by waiting for satisfactory outcomes in real time. Extensively, I’ve used photographic layering to make a comment about aspects of human behavior in cities. It’s a particular technique I’ve chosen, to make a body of work which, I feel, gives visual expression to the human condition now.
In these photographs, the built environment, static and inanimate, is the stage in which a walking choreography is played out. The humans, who bring the animate, are spatially arranged as though carefully directed. They appear to have been preconditioned to act like automatons or self-absorbed passers-by uncannily acting out parts in mental isolation.
I’m looking for rhythm in moving figures separated visually within plastic space. It’s the spaces between the human inhabitants that are equally likely to control the narrative. Even though I’m working in a real environment, shooting it in this way can give it an unreal look. Perhaps the influence of digital technology on the City is already illustrating the boundary between the real and the virtual world, like Goddard’s Alphaville which, through deft use of real locations, transformed a real city into a science-fictional one.
