Dominic Turner

Informations about the artist

The duality contained within the ecology of the public park is the central thread running through the images in this series. While the majority of people use these spaces for perfectly normal and positive activities such as walking the dog, having a picnic, feeding the ducks, pushing a pram, jogging or playing a game of football, a darker side runs in parallel – the drug dealing and taking, homelessness, prostitution, violence and even murder.
The photographs in this series are a response to this dichotomy, at once expressing their contrived beauty or picture perfectness with a sense of unease and foreboding.

The aesthetic palette of the 19th century Pictorialists is employed, combining the look and feel of early photographic processes with the atmospherics of inclement weather – fog, rain, snow - as a backdrop in an attempt to obscure the detail within the scene. By contemporising this technique, it becomes a visual metaphor. While these scenes may look somewhat pleasing, the lack of detail hints at a fuller picture and a sense that there is more going on here that is obscured from view.
The Dream Park series is an ongoing work.