Days Spent with the Darkness

Days Spent with the Darkness confronts grief directly. Two figures stand together, bound by a third, unseen presence; the one who is gone. Moored apart from the city, they watch life move on, suspended in stillness, held by an ambiguous, isolating loss.

Days Spent With The Darkness explores grief, a theme that often appears in my work in more conceptual forms, but here it is confronted directly: it is about death. The figures represent myself and my brother. There is always a third presence in each photograph, but not one materialised in human form. Whether it appears as a pole, a shadow, or the silhouette of a face between us, this third figure represents the one who has passed: the unseen presence that connects us all through something we can feel but never fully grasp. It is not memory because it cannot be, but something else. An ambiguous grief. The grief of someone you may never have truly known, or cannot clearly remember, but especially, the grief for someone who was meant to be in your life. With that comes a particular kind of loneliness, an experience that for most of your young life few people the same age have yet endured.

The figures are moored on a riverbank, distanced from the city, watching the world continue without them. Life moves on in the distance, yet you remain suspended in stillness. So much can be happening around you, and yet this grief isolates you. What a strange feeling- to be surrounded by life, and still apart from it.