People are separated from nature through building material culture in the form of the city, which excludes uncontrollable natural elements in order to maintain itself.
The urban environment is like a house of cards, susceptible to degeneration when plants, animals and weather systems interact with its material structure in unforeseen ways.
Parks and woodlands are designated as ‘safe’ nature, while nature defined as weeds or infestations threaten the city habitant’s sense of dwelling. Yet, within the middle-ground of gardens and hedgerows, plants and animals possess their own vibrancy – interrupting people’s daily routes and creeping into the subtle boundaries of defined urban space.
Photography already hints at the bending of the rules of reality and perception. Photographing the city can reveal its unnaturalness: by using flash photography’s surreal effect (the snapshot format culturally regarded as undoctored) the urban environment can be made a backdrop: tensions between nature and human material culture make the city seem beyond-real.
