Rob Ball‘s Silent Coast, published by Photo Editions (2022), suggests a distorted type of lyrical documentary investigation where the cruel conditions of political complications atomize the social concerns of a place and its people, reducing the everyday plight of the individual as small, unheard, and unnecessary. An opaque and uneasy accent of dissolve compounds the whisper of British life within the work. This is not the artist’s desire at work but his direct observation of a political and social condition. In the work, people are reduced to trace and are managed obliquely by the photographer’s absent consideration of their direct documentation. There are people everywhere in Silent Coast, yet not a single soul occupies the framing. Instead, we are left to examine the facade of British coastal fun-making, the architecture of amusement, and the strident vernacular realism of architectural profanity…

FULL ARTICLE ON PATREON