This work is from Glenn Sloggett’s series Lost man. It shows a white picket fence in a leafy garden setting at night. Instead of being a neatly ordered and freshly painted symbol of suburban idealism, the white picket fence shown here is wonky and falling apart around an overgrown and neglected garden. Here Sloggett’s subject acts not just as a pathetic fallacy for suburban life, moreover, for the photographic medium itself. If the perfect structure of Paul Strand’s 'The white fence, Port Kent, New York' (1916) stands as a work of photographic high modernism, Sloggett’s own 'Picket fence' is the harbinger of the medium’s descent into postmodern entropy. This photograph is typical of Sloggett’s practice in that it documents traces of human activity in a dilapidated suburban setting. Sloggett uses photography to hone in on the often overlooked details of everyday suburbia. He turns his lens to suburban streets, shopping strips, public parks, cemeteries and domestic spaces, imbuing his images with hints of humour, irony, sadness and hope. While Sloggett’s images are devoid of actual people, they speak of the lives of ordinary human beings, of broken dreams and the tragic comedy of human endeavour and ambition.

(2020)