The photographic project Lonely Gardens investigates overlooked and undervalued spaces within manicured gardens, such as peripheral zones, abandoned corners, and functional margins often dismissed as merely utilitarian. Beneath their apparent order and permanence, these spaces reveal landscapes in continual transformation, where cultivation and entropy, growth and decay, and presence and absence coexist. I am interested in these spaces not simply as neglected areas but as sites where human intention encounters forces beyond control.

The project draws upon the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus's assertion that "you can't enter the same river twice" and the concept of panta rhei, which holds that everything is in a state of flux. This philosophical framework positions the garden not as a static entity but as an active force capable of transformation. Although gardens are constructed to suggest permanence through the arrangement of paths, plants, and boundaries, as well as the careful management of nature, processes such as erosion, weather, water, development, and decay continually disrupt this order. Apparent stability is always subject to change. The garden also evokes the transformative perspectives of Greek mythology, where nature is a site of metamorphosis, conflict, desire, and confrontation between human intention and uncontrollable forces.

Black-and-white photography enables me to emphasize structure, texture, light, shadow, and spatial relationships. While symmetry and balance suggest human order, fractures, interruptions, and organic growth introduce elements of uncertainty.

The aesthetic of Film Noir has influenced my work through its use of black-and-white imagery, pronounced contrasts of light and shadow, ambiguity, isolation, and psychological atmosphere. Rather than presenting the garden as picturesque or idyllic, I employ darkness, negative space, and sharp tonal contrasts to evoke mystery and uncertainty. By rendering familiar elements slightly estranged, I prompt viewers to examine aspects that are typically overlooked.

The photographs are intentionally non-temporal, avoiding references to any specific historical period or moment. Instead, they focus on ongoing processes of growth, erosion, decay, transformation, and renewal that unfold across multiple timescales. Although created within the present-day context of the Anthropocene, these landscapes illustrate the convergence of human, ecological, and geological time. The Anthropocene provides the current context, highlighting landscapes increasingly shaped by human activity and revealing the limits of human control.

I am drawn to moments of transition, such as when a shape bends, breaks, emerges, or begins to disappear. Service paths, drainage areas, eroded edges, neglected plantings, and transitional spaces function as metaphors for impermanence, as they simultaneously display evidence of human intention and reveal processes that predate and will outlast us.

Lonely Gardens asks what happens when impermanence is the main subject, not just a background condition. The photos sit between showing reality and using metaphor, capturing places that are neither fully ordered nor totally wild. In these overlooked spaces, I find a quiet reflection of human experience—our wish for things to last in a world that is always changing.