Ghosts 

Are people becoming less social? I have noticed as I walk along the streets that people seem to isolate themselves as a means of insulation against the world around them. Each person, myself included, seems to exist inside a protective bubble - an invisible barrier – that protects his or her personal space. I conducted an experiment; stepping out of my invisible barrier I tried to make eye contact and offer up a smile, but more often than not I received no response or, at best, nothing more than a quick suspicious glance. I stopped my experiment and went back intomy cocoon. The people around me went back to being moving shapes that I was aware of only when they briefly entered into my field of vision. For that brief moment they entered my consciousness and a detail, perhaps something they carried, something they wore or a physical feature caught my eye; and then they were gone from my view and my mind. They ceased to exist. They become ghosts.  

This work is a document: it is a record of people in that brief moment of recognition as they strayed into my field of vision. It is a moment when they are off guard, safe inside their personal space, separated from the environment and people around them. At the same time it is a fiction the world seen through my own eyes, filtered by my mind as I try to understand what is happening around me. Is this individual separation a personal choice, or a subconscious reaction to modern life?