Narrative Photography Project

In The Rearview

As a child, darkness created fear not through what was literally there, but from what my mind imagined could be there. As an adult, my mind fills the gaps in the darkness not with monsters and ghosts anymore, but with the stories I’ve seen on the news and in movies. Serial killers, kidnappers, and others that lurk in the dark prey on innocent, unsuspecting people, often oblivious to the evil presence watching over them, and in this photograph, I hoped to capture the unease I feel at night, even in a supposedly safe environment. The figure draped in shadow, eyes trained on the camera, acts as a symbol for the different fears that my mind conjures up could be watching in the night, and the subjects in the foreground reference the movie trope of an unsuspecting group in a car unaware to the killer sneaking up behind them. I encourage the viewer to think about what their mind might conjure up in the emptiness of the night’s darkness, and answer for themselves: is the figure watching the people in the car, or are they watching you?