The Watcher

2013
Photo diptych

This photographic diptych plays with the reassurance of the safety of your own home and how it could give one a false sense of security. In the first photo, we see a view from a darkened room out onto buildings on the other side of the road and recognise the same windows on the second photo. Looming in the shadows of this second panel is the outline of a dark figure, standing in the room, facing the scene depicted in the first photo. The work's title, The Watcher, explains this captured scene: we see a person in the intimacy of their apartment watching, observing the outside world. But this is not all there is, because the artist has hidden clues to a deeper, sinister signification. If you watch closely, you will notice strange reflections on the second photo, those reflections reveal something more unsettling: there is a window. The photo is taken from the outside. Not the person in the photo, gazing into the flats seen in the first picture is the watcher, you are the person observing, you are the watcher. This photo is your viewpoint. You are invading someone's privacy. By looking at this work, the artist has turned the beholder into the perpetrator. You arrive at this photo innocent and you leave it guilty.