Signs of a Struggle (2002) by Clare Strand was a work made in response to the phenomena of the New Town and Garden City movement. These were supposed to be developments that offered an ideal way of living but they ended up being a haven for drugs and violent crime.
Strand’s work was inspired by Eugene Lonesco’s absurdist play Les Tiers San Gages, where a man discovers a city of light but is then devastated to find that a killer resides there. This made me reflect more on this sense that things are not as they seem and how light can sometimes cover the darkness.
The stills of the crime scenes are eerie in their portrayal of what has supposedly taken place. The question is, can photography make real that which we cannot perceive as tangible? Pictures are taken of crimes after they have happened, to show how things were found. Does this reflect how memories of traumatic experiences are stored? Markers are left in the aftermath which have to be pieced together to create the fragments of what took place.
