Artist Statement:
These photographs were taken in the summer of 2008 during my first trip to London and the countryside to the north. During my travels, I found a people open and closed, friendly and guarded, proud and unsure. This vacillation was not the result of simple indecisiveness on how to treat foreigners. Rather, I believe it was the result of a new reality of insecurity and mistrust ushered forth by the strains of globalism and the continuing threat of terrorism. Widely known to be the most watched people of a democratic nation, I responded by photographing not the British themselves but the public spaces they now occupy—a space in which one is constantly reminded that they are being watched by the authorities. Now that three years have passed since taking these photographs I have also realized that my attention to this guarded British stance was also a reflection of my own unease with the frayed threads of personal privacy and political fear mongering which have materialized in my own country after the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001. In this respect, these photographs are also my response to our current era of global terrorism and how we have decided to adapt to it.
Purchase Book