Domestic bliss

With the advent of Google earth and the increase in the use of CCTV surveillance to monitor social areas, I wanted to explore our unknowingness with regard to how we live alongside each other.

With the advent of Google earth and the increase in the use of CCTV surveillance to monitor residential and business areas, I wanted to explore our unknowingness with regard to how we live alongside each other and how minutely our lives can be examined by zooming in on a specific theme. This story starts with an image of Brighton, taken with a telephoto lens, it presents an overview of the city's urban area, and its grainy frame implies a blurred surveillance without specific identification, and then through each subsequent connected image, by zooming in on a particular section embedded in the previous image, moves to its finale, the armchair in the corner, creased from use, but empty, vacated recently? Or some time ago? What does it tell us about the person/people living there without ever seeing or featuring them? Each image sheds some light upon their existence and story without physically identifying them. People make assumptions and judgments about situations and each other all the time without any understanding, or a spoken word between them. Are these simply images without meaning or do they give us useful information that we want or need? In using video surveillance in cities we attempt to identify unusual behaviour that may challenge our security. We connect story lines on the basis of what we see but do the images presented here answer all our questions or do they raise more questions? The inquisitive viewer wants to know more about this story line, but are we justified in our invasion of privacy, moving from an accessible exterior to a private interior. The portrait image of the front-door is pivotal and symbolic as it represents the bridge between them both. I chose to use Ilford Delta 3200 black and white film for this project because I wanted to take advantage of its grainy structure likening the images to old video surveillance footage. It suitably portrays the gloomy world that is surveillance, are we joyous in viewing someone else's existence without their knowledge of this intrusion?