PROJECT STATEMENT - THE SAME REALITY

Once, I lived in an Edwardian house near the top of a hill. Now, I live ina flat over a Chinese restaurant at the bottom of that same slope. I wonder sometimes if there is a visible line that proves you have moved from the higher echelons of this society with walled gardens and cedar trees, stained glass windows overlooking lawns with lush herbacious borders, to the lower reaches where outdoor spaces are shared and used mainly to hang out laundry; where windows rattle when the pubs empty out and the patrons stagger towards stomach-settling takeaways.

We are used to thinking in dualities: right or wrong, male or female, truth or lies, rich or poor, deserving or not. But what if we stop thinking of opposites and dichotomies and start thinking more of a spectrum, a continuity, a oneness? I suspect that if we can achieve that, difference actually melts away and leaves room for acceptance to take its place. We come to understand that things we sensed were in opposition are actually all expressions of the same reality. Poverty is not separate from wealth. Dark is not separate from light. They are both part of a larger whole.

I started photographing my home town in the dark as an exercise in banishing the winter blues. Instead of dreading the dark nights, I relished the chance to chase a different kind of light, and subsequently started to see my surroundings in a different way too. A glass square of orange light looked just as inviting in a block of council flats as it did in a Victorian Villa or a seventy’s bungalow. Home, no matter where it might be found, is a commonaltiy that we all seek, all need, all appreciate. We are all under one sun. And one moon too it seems.