The body of work hidden consists of a larger series of images taken over a number of evenings in a Baltic Sea State capital. Here we have selected 20 different images which are intended to capture the obscured or unnoticed elements of everyday life.
Portrayed in this way the images guide us to readjust our vision and view the ordinary around us through another set of eyes. The work deals with the sites and places that people choose to ignore or hurry past. The parts of the cityscape that are so familiar but are not registered. The images are fleeting fragments of potential, of movement, they could be anywhere but they regularly pass us by without thought.
Trafficking in Human Beings is by action a hidden crime - the normality of the surroundings where trafficking and exploitation take place enable the traffickers to partake in their clandestine activity largely undetected and in collusion with others. The crime leaves few tracks as the traces and the stains are removed when no one is looking.
The hotel room, the brothel, the apartment, the strip bar, the pool hall, the restaurant, the kitchen, the laundry room, the ferry terminal, the building site, the shipyard, the truck car park, the factory, the street - places that people walk by, pass through or places that are just out of reach. Safely behind closed doors, locked doors, barred doors - safe for whom? Watched from a far this underground landscape of transitional abuse, rape and violence, poverty, destitution and desperation creates a disturbing vision.
The images deal with a fictive personal memory and the divisions between closeness and distance. What would the world look like if one were trafficked, what would one potentially see - familiar non-descript interiors and lit exterior motifs that would act as points of reference in an unfamiliar and hostile surrounding?
hidden is firstly an investigation into the relationship to our surroundings. How many questions do we really ask ourselves in our everyday? Do we really understand the complexity of our surroundings? By playing with the idea of distance in both a geographical and symbolic manner the photographs tell us that we don`t. The close works, portraits of items that give a hint of intimacy but are somehow blurred; a lamp a curtain, a wallpaper detail are deliberately abstracted and far from reach. Too close to see, these are images from places and situations that we are supposed to know well. But ignore.
The images primarily relate to how we read and understand our surrounding. The subjects are rendered visible, scenes situated in timeless space, giving the real essence of what we fail or choose to see.
The technique the photographers used focuses on the rupturing of light in shadow, giving us the opportunity to interpret the subject in a new way. The photographers also chose to focus their interest on what is often described as the peripheral, in both a human and metaphorical sense, a sense which permeates throughout the images. The small unexplained differences of light and obscurity; whether a view from the side, above or below tell us as much about the technique as the participant observational nature of the photographer.
Concept TF-THB
Photographers Marta Bociek and Anthony Jay | 
