Description

This photographic exhibition considers aftermath as a central condition of urban life. Set in Edinburgh, it focuses on moments when activity has passed and the city is caught between use and erasure: after crowds disperse, after work ends, after spaces and materialities stop performing their intended roles. These are not moments of absence, but of exposure. Through photographs of residual objects, altered spaces, and maintenance in progress, I examine how performativities are continually produced through labour that remains largely unseen. Dismantled structures, closed pubs, discarded materials, tired faces, and early-morning repairs reveal a city sustained by processes of undoing, cleaning, and reset. This approach defines cities as something actively maintained rather than naturally stable, drawing attention to how meaning, function, and social importance shift once an object, space, or moment has fulfilled its purpose. By focusing on what remains rather than what is celebrated, this project anthropologically foregrounds labour, temporality, and material transformation as fundamental to urban life. Photographed through both repeated visits and fleeting glances, this work adopts a slow yet spontaneous ethnographic approach. In doing so, it invites viewers to reflect on how cities endure not through moments of visibility or intensity, but through the continuous, unremarked work that follows them: the aftermath that makes the next moment possible.