This new series for Brighton Photo Fringe 2022 explores ideas of real and imagined New York. Our collective ideas of what a city looks like are formed as much by art as by reality, perhaps more so with New York - arguably the archetypal cinematic cityscape. GOTHAM brings together images of New York streets with images of movie sets. The vernacular of a backlot simulacrum raises suspicion about the veracity of the actual New York scenes. An imagined place where everything is perfect - a definition of utopia that, for me, could just as easily describe cinema. REAL UTOPIAS prompted me to consider how my street photography in the real world is influenced by cinematic constructions of cityscapes - the architecture of a city and the fabric of a facade. A vision of a utopian city can be inherently contradictory because cities are not homogenous, can't have perfect qualities. This work playfully confuses the real and the unreal Gotham.

My photographic practice explores the delicate baIance between absence and presence in the detail of the urban environment. In evolving my own visual language I inhabit the space between making a picture and capturing an image. I have exhibited in Brighton Photo Fringe 2020, 2018, 2016, 2014, 2012, 2010 and 2008 as well as in East London Photomonth, the Royal Scottish Academy and have a forthcoming exhibition in the US in January 2023.