Places Nowhere was my first photographic project, and it documents public space across Manchester, Blackpool, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and transitional environments.

The work is driven by a dual intent: to produce a sustained visual study of everyday contemporary life, and to translate the psychological reality of dissociation into a coherent artistic language.

Dissociation, understood as a protective disconnection from reality when experience becomes too overwhelming, is the project’s conceptual spine. Referencing Pierre Janet’s foundational account (1889), I frame dissociation as a “place nowhere”: a state of physical presence paired with emotional or cognitive absence.

The resulting images hold a deliberate tension between observation and detachment, anonymity and intimacy.

The project also included an augmented-reality layer using the Artivive app. This digital component expands the viewing experience and supports the project’s wider aim: to open conversation about mental health and the long-term impacts of sexual abuse without reducing the work to spectacle.

Exhibited at Gallery Oldham - 09/12/23 - 09/03/24