Anne Hardy

Strange, fantastical, and a wee bit unsettling, Anne Hardy’s photographs invite glimpses into imaginary places, each suggesting fictions of a very surreal nature. Working in her studio, Hardy builds each of her sets entirely from scratch; a labour intensive process of constructing a barren room, then developing its elaborate interior down to the most minute detail. Using the transient nature of photography, Hardy’s haunting images serve less to document, but rather to add to the suspension of belief; withholding the actual experience of her environments, her photos evoke a sense of mystery, enticing the viewer’s fantasies to entangle with her own.

In pieces such as Cell and Untitled VI, Hardy’s cluttered interiors become sites of wonder and unease as hordes of miscellaneous found objects compile with an obsessive’s eccentric order. Hardy’s subjects suggest the not-quite-right ambience of madness or dreamscape; a sensation heightened through the unnatural intensity of artificial light. Printed in large format, Hardy’s photos give the viewer a sense of looking through a window, peeping in on something perhaps better left unknown.