Journeys in Suburbia
These photographs have been taken from the car over the past three years between Kingston and Carshalton, two south London suburbs, at the same times of the day, on the way to and from my lecturing job in photography at Carshalton College. The final selection of 18 photographs is thematically divided into three smaller sections of 6 photographs each under the headings of “On the Road”, “People and their Castles” and “Stuck behind and Side Views”.
Suburbia is usually referred to as dull and boring, but affluent too. However in this suburban landscape I found something downtrodden, not derelict by any means, but low key, and somehow unaware of itself. I found some parts oppressively ugly, though some were typically ‘cute’. It was the landscape of monotonous roads and faceless houses which lined them in an unfailingly monotonous fashion. The surroundings seeemed to lack any form, any purpose. Given the amount of traffic and perennial road works, constant crawling and stopping was as big part of my journey as moving. The original idea was to to take a photograph indiscriminately of whatever was in front of me whenever I stopped. This was to be an objective record of the trajectory between Kingston and Carshalton – a record of how many times one has to stop in traffic, an account of daily commuting, a picture of the physical movement through a suburban space during the morning and evening rush-hour, a facet of contemporary living in a metropolis. However, the minute I’d picked up the camera from the empty passenger’s seat I started selecting, framing, choosing, avoiding, chasing…
I was fascinated by a number of expensive looking cars in front of modestly looking houses, which clearly reflects the economic situation of the current time, with overpriced houses – and relative and comparative affordability of big, flashy cars – those status symbols of suburbia. You are what you drive, in suburbia more that anywhere else. The cars also looked like they took the place of the flowery or lawn front gardens, that are popularly associated with suburbia. This looked like a place that was aspiring to be suburbia, but somehow through lack of space or lack of money or lack of class didn’t quite make it. Is there a working class suburbia? Some of the pictures were pure finds: a dead fox, ‘worship Jesus”, or ‘vehicles continuously stopping’. And luck had to have it, because all these shots were possible only because I had to stop in the traffic for long enough to to pick up the camera and take a photograph. In that sense this is still an objective, dispassionate record of stoppages in a traffic jam. Some of the facades of the houses are almost ‘perfectly’ or at least, squarely framed, which demonstrates how long I was stuck in traffic in those moments.
In retrospect I see that these photographs have been subconsciously influenced and inspired by Robert Frank.
Resume
Bjanka Kadic, born in Vinkovci, Croatia, 1958. Gained her BA (Hons) in Photography from University of Westminster in 1995 and her MA in Photography from London College of Printing, University of The Arts, London in 1999. Currently she is working as a freelance photographer.
Her work has been shown in London and nationally, while her photographs are in private collections in England, United States and Croatia.
Her work have been published in “Ta(l)king Pictures”, 2004, by IRIS, Engendering the City: “Women artists and urban space”, 1997 by Marsha Meskimmon, and magazines such as Artists Newsletter, Feminist Review, British Journal of Photography and Professional Photographer.
Companies such as Random House, Running Press, Paperchase and others have used her photographs.
