The Airborne Toxic Event

Publisher's description

Inspired by the chapter of the same name in Don Delillo’s novel White Noise – “the airborne toxic event” chronicles a chemical spill that leads to the evacuation of the small town inhabited by the protagonist Jack Gladney and his family.

During the process of evacuation Jack is exposed to a potentially lethal dose of the chemical and thus begins Jack’s obsession with his own and everyone else’s mortality.

Everyone approaches death in different and often contradictory ways. Some with terror, others dispassionately, others with faith. But when the outbreak of COVID 19, took the lives of two family members within 72 hours of each other, death was no longer reduced to a white noise lingering menacingly in the background of my life.

I suppose this series of photographs is not only a response to their deaths but also to document in someway what was happening globally but with my lens restricted to my local environment.

What unfolded was a sometimes tragic, sometimes comic attempt of local people going about their daily lives caught between survival instincts and the sudden spectre of an uncertain future.