Silence in Schools

Silence in Schools is an ongoing photographic art project that reveals the stillness and silence in an environment generally known to be colourful, bustling, and clamorous. The images depict the physical effect teaching and learning can have on a classroom environment, and how these spaces feel once vacated by pupils and teachers.

Viewers are invited into the empty school environment to experience these spaces as they have been left at the end of the workday. Skewed tables, stacked chairs, littered floors, and discarded equipment all play an intrinsic part in this body of work.

The natural world influenced the visual approach of Silence in Schools. Weather phenomena such as fog, mist, and snow bring with them a silence, muting colours and dampening both the visual and aural senses. The images use these elements of desaturated colour and selective focus to conjure the same sense of quiet.