My inspiration for this body of work came from the adverts used to sell the London suburbs to the British public between the 1920s and 1950s. These posters often represented suburbia as a rural idyll, trading on a nostalgic image of the English countryside that had little resemblance to the uniform, densely populated communities that were being built. With grim irony, those seeking an escape from inner-city life were in fact contributing to the destruction of rural England as countryside gave way to housing, roads and train tracks. This made me think about how our desire for perfection very often leads to some form of destruction, causing much absurdity and tragedy throughout human history.

I wanted to find a way to represent this idea visually, and decided that exploring the negative impact of humans upon the countryside – with its utopian connotations – would be a very effective and provocative means of doing this. I became especially interested in the way that the rural landscape is often littered with incongruous reminders of the presence of people. Objects such as bike frames, punctured footballs and abandoned blankets can be found in the most picturesque and tranquil of rural spaces, and demonstrate our callous disregard for our surroundings. Yet at the same time they possess a perverse attraction and fascination of their own, providing a visually interesting if somewhat disturbing spectacle.

I decided to explore the tension between the ideal offered by the adverts for suburbia and the reality underlying them by composing my images along the lines of the original posters. Rather than feature people in my shots, I decided to replace them with objects that represented their interaction with the landscape.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• • Back to top