PROJECT STATEMENT - CONNECTIONS

It started with the fanciful notion that each of us go about our lives in the midst of a bubble, that contains our back story, our thoughts, memories, opinions, life experience; our hopes and aspirations; our fears, our various personalities, our coping mechanisms. This bubble defines us; separates and protects us from everyone else. Sometimes, like for instance when we travel by train, our bubbles find themselves intermingled with those belonging to strangers and for a time, we form part of each other’s backstory. Whether through a conversation, a need for direction, a lack of space in an aisle, a shared wait on a platform, a glance, a wry smile in the face of delay, or at a coffee stand, even through the glass of my lens, connections are made, however fleeting. Immortalising them in photographic form strengthens these connections – the people I stopped to talk to, to ask if I could take photographs, may remember that conversation and perhaps relay it to others.  Even if they never see the images I make they will perhaps wonder about them and recall the journey they were making at the time: more memories are formed, more connections forged and like a map of the transport network they spread out; an invisible web of barely tangible human activity.

I have always enjoyed travelling by train as it satisfies that urge to “people watch” - a favourite pastime whereby I like to ponder how much can be gleaned from ephemeral moments, anticipating stories as they unfold around me.  But as we’re going in for fanciful notions here, I’ve also always held onto an idea of the train journey being part of an alternate landscape - a world that runs alongside ‘normal life’. A world that takes us out of our usual habits, allows us to momentarily adopt another persona, that of the traveller. In some ways it is a performance where all take on the dual roles of actor and audience.

For this work, I made a series of trips, some just for the purpose of making these images, some where I was travelling for other reasons but in either case always had a camera with me. I focused my lens on the idea of the connections made as I and my fellow passengers navigated this alternate theatrical landscape of carriage, station and waiting room, leaving our ordinary selves behind for the duration of the journey.