The Tiger in the Tall Grass (2022)
 

'Its been said that Inuits have many words to describe white...I wonder how long it will be before we have as many words to describe darkness'  (Todd Hido, from Bright Black World)

 

Sometimes I am struck with a particular kind of unease. This unease comes from a realization that no matter how hard we try ensure the safety of ourselves and those we love, the world can present us with events that are random, unpredictable, or outside of our ability to control, and these events may cause us harm.

 

When considering how I might express this unease photographically, I noted the similarity between this unease and that which I felt as a child towards the dark. I decided therefore to photograph the night as a metaphor for this unease.

 

I chose to photograph locations in my own community where the darkness of night interfaced with artificial light - where what is familiar and benign and unremarkable in daytime transforms to being more ominous, possibly even dangerous, when darkness falls.  I’m also interested in how our perception shifts in the darkness – how when the world is less discernible we begin to imagine/create the world, to experience a more subjective space. Liminality is something I search for – the transitional spaces between light/dark, known and unknown, safety and threat.

 

Shadow cannot exist without light, and that which is lit can only be perceived because of shadow. This fundamental relationship is central to the photographic process. In these images I wanted to contrast the scale of the night, its darkness, to the limitations of artificial lightin its efforts to banish it. The night and shadow are as much my subject as that which is illuminated.

 

As I photographed the night, I became more aware of glimpses of memories relating to my own childhood fear of the dark. This, I’ve been told, occurred around my third year (a common age for the emergence of this fear) but my personal memories from this time are at best fragmentary, and probably partially constructed on the basis of imagination. Some of the images here are taken in my own current home, where, when moving through it at night, I experience echoes of what memory fragments I have from that time.

 

My clearest memory from that time is not of reality, but of a recurring dream of being stalked by a tiger as I ran through long grass which towered above me. I usually woke screaming from this dream with my mother already beside me, comforting me, the light turned on, and the world made safe. That memory I am sure of.