LIGHT/MASS is an ongoing series that explores alien-like urban landscapes found in cities across the United States.

Through deliberately chosen lightingconditions and framing, I work to emphasize the architectural other-worldliness found within familiar environments.

I moved to New York City from my hometown in England during the Spring of 2020, days before the city shut down.

Like many people living in New York during that time, I walked and cycled through the almost empty streets, trying to pass the time and get a sense of my new home.

I became fascinated with these strange-looking buildings I’d stumble upon, looming suddenly when turning a corner.

 They felt like distinctly otherworldly structures, alien to the surrounding architecture, yet unnoticed by passersby. 

I began seeking them out, looking for oddity in a city returning to normal.

The crisp, sunny light of New York City influenced my response to these structures; it amplified texture and created new geometry as crisp shadows formed on outcrops, hard angled facades and the ground on which the buildings stood. 

The buildings took on a monumental appearance, absorbing the bright sunlight like it was a natural piece of the landscape.

The otherworldliness was exaggerated by the fact that when I first encountered these structures, I was often alone on a street in what should have been one of the busiest cities in the world. 

The resulting photographs are thus devoid of human presence. 

Even as people returned to the city, I sought to remove all traces of people from the images, wanting to maintain the unnerving atmosphere that I had found so compelling early on. 

I developed a method whereby I combined long exposure techniques, several post-production methods, the use of a tripod and a shift lens to retain the eerie feel of the first few images. 

This slower, more deliberate process of image making enabled me to imagine the building as a monument, standing eternal as the hectic ebb and flow of the city happens around it.

The buildings I photograph were designed by architects and planners who envisioned a bright utopian future for those living in America’s large cities. 

I prefer not to present a comment on whether this was successful. 

Instead, I seek to frame them as incredible monuments, dynamic and unsettling, now standing out of place and overlooked.