Hannah Starkey

Since 1997, Hannah Starkey has been producing photographic meditations on contemporary life. The first were staged scenarios based on the experiences of young women living in the city, meticulously constructed, with cinematic suggestions of a narrative artificially suspended in time. Her more recent work, both technically and compositionally more advanced, sets up tension between the real and the imaginary, and draws attention to the banality and dehumanizing effects of the constructed environments in which we lead so much of our lives. Her close observation of the urban landscape can make surfaces--a wall, an air-conditioning duct, a runway--relevant subjects in themselves. Her development has played off of some swift, subtle shifts in contemporary photography in the past decade. This book, her first, covers 10 years' work.