Rachael Rands

"The paradoxical increase in the intensity of solitude brought about by the expansion of communications technologies is the idea behind my recent photographs.
It is a feeling which can be experienced driving at night listening to the inane discussions of insomniacs on LBC radio or witnessing the automatic security announcements in the empty ticket hall at Gatwick airport.

Advertising is something that surrounds us and much has been written about its impact on us. I am interested in the way advertising affects our public spaces and how mass media defines our personal tastes.

It is a feeling which is palpable in the paintings of Edward Hopper.

An increasing proportion of our lives is spent in petrol stations, train stations, motorways, airports and supermarkets or in front of TV and computer monitors. These places, which incite no sense of belonging, are what Marc Augé calls ‘non-places’.
For me, the disconnectedness we experience in these places is typified by the frozen dynamism of deserted, highly illuminated spaces at night."