Susan Blatchford, It's lonelier with you in the room (Student (ATEP 2017))

We crave a quiet sanctuary, away from the noise of the world. We strive to perfect our domestic realm - a private space where we can intimately be and explore the secret parts of ourselves. As the fences go up, and the doors close, the silence settles in – we can breathe again. However, through the quiet, creeps isolation, and the boundaries between reality and psyche becomes marred. We make sense of our world through the exploration of our identities. How we see ourselves is defined through the connections we experience to our environment, to others and to ourselves. This body of work investigates the apparent malaise in contemporary life where, while we are all digitally connected, there is a palpable and contrary social disconnection. These are common concerns in contemporary photo art discourse – however this project seeks to articulate the significance of the relationships between place, connection and identity.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.