Outside Time

This video experiment was created as a test piece for my PhD (Aura and Trace, 2018) and as a vehicle for the exploration of hauntological quality. It was created using archive photographs kindly lent by Leeds Library & Information Services, audio field recordings and my own photography.

A young girl gazes down at the street below, but the streets are empty... This work explores the idea that children have gradually vanished from public urban space over the past one hundred years or so. It does not seek to document or analyse this phenomenon, a task that could be better achieved by other means. Here photography is not used so much as evidence, but as a way of communicating an idea; the idea that a great vanishing has taken place without our noticing, and that only by 'breaking time', by distorting reality, we can reveal how unsettling this greater truth really is.