Tintin Huang is a filmmaker and photographer working in London. We got together last week in the West End to take photos in and around the Phoenix Theatre in London, including the Phoenix Garden, a little-known community garden hidden around the back of the theatre in between the buildings near St Giles’s Churchyard.
To peer into the back of places, the hidden corners such as the empty theatre corridors when the audience are not there, is to get a glimpse into spaces people don’t usually see. Into these empty passages and dark corners we took two little people Jacket Boy (2022) and Virginia (2023) in search of ‘uncanny places’ to photograph them.
But what is an uncanny space?
Uncanny places can be those that people move through but do not live in – hotels, hospital waiting rooms, train stations. Empty places without the crowds bustling around they are eerie and silent.
It is as if they are waiting for something to happen.
In between places are uncanny; the alley behind terrace houses; the space at the back of the theatre roof where the fire escape stairs come down; spaces with no purpose and where random objects are abandoned, broken household items, rusty metal appliances and broken pots.
Old fashioned décor can make a building seem uncanny, such as the old style of decadent theatre interior with dark red paint and gaudy gold ornate Baroque decorative plaster mouldings.
A great place for my puppets to wander or to sit and think melancholy thoughts perhaps?
If you are interested in purchasing prints of any of the photographs seen here please do get in touch.