PLACES NOWHERE

Places Nowhere was my first photographic project. Made across Manchester, Blackpool, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and the spaces in between, it documents streets, buildings and people encountered in everyday public life. I was interested in what these places looked like, but also in why some of them felt strangely distant even while I was standing in them.

The project has two connected aims: to build a sustained visual record of contemporary life and to find a photographic language for dissociation. Drawing on Pierre Janet’s early writing about dissociation, I use the phrase places nowhere to describe a feeling of being physically present while emotionally or mentally elsewhere. It is my interpretation of that experience, rather than a label I place on the people or locations in the photographs.

Across the series, familiar scenes can feel unsettled. A solitary figure, an empty stretch of pavement or the light falling across a building leaves space between what the camera records and what I felt when I made the image. The photographs move between observation and detachment, and between public places and private experience.

For the first exhibition, I extended the project with an augmented reality layer viewed through the Artivive app. Working with digital artist Anna Burrows, I used animation to offer another way of encountering selected images. The aim was to open a conversation about mental health and the lasting effects of sexual abuse while allowing the photographs to stand as photographs.

Places Nowhere was exhibited at Gallery Oldham from 9 December 2023 to 9 March 2024. It was shown again on Deansgate in Manchester in February 2025, upstairs from Victorious Voices.