These photos capture the eerie feeling right before you wake up
Olivia Parker’s debut photobook explores darkness as a generative force rather than destructive absence, capturing liminal spaces and threshold moments across five years of shooting in Ireland, France, Utah, and Connecticut. The series documents gloomy landscapes, worn interiors, and uncanny natural phenomena—a girl in tulle crossing a frost-covered field, an albino horse with supernatural eyes, domestic objects in decay—seeking that suspended dream-state just before waking where the ordinary becomes strange and displaced. Shot primarily on older iPhones and film stock, Parker’s deliberately hazy aesthetic reinforces the dreamlike register of her subjects, mostly drawn from her intimate circle of friends and acquaintances. Her practice centers on preserving overlooked places and forgotten moments, rescuing them from oblivion through photography’s documentary impulse. The work engages Richard Hell’s philosophical framework on darkness as imagination, positioning her images as explorations of the self’s incongruence with social reality.
Original article published on Dazed — AI-generated summary. Visit the website to read the full article at the source. Image via Dazed.
