A Contemporary-Art Installation?

I framed this shot as I found it — no rearranging, no cleanup, no staging. A raw space, forgotten in function but rich in visual contradiction. On one hand, it reads as abandonment: scattered rubbish, a deflated tyre, a dirty sink hanging by a thread, and a cupboard that’s outlived its utility. On the other, it holds a disconcerting balance of form and void, of placed objects that unintentionally echo the tropes of installation art. You could easily walk into a gallery and find something not unlike this, recontextualised and labelled with a price tag.

The camera’s low perspective exaggerates the volume of the room, pulling the viewer into its centre. The sink on the left and the cupboard on the right anchor the scene horizontally, while the tyre and broom create a vertical symmetry — unintentional geometry emerging from chaos. Light comes from a source behind me, casting flat illumination that drains the room of depth, enhancing the feeling of institutional neglect.

I shot this with a wide-angle lens, letting the natural distortion at the edges speak to the warped reality of the space. Exposure was deliberately neutral — I didn’t want shadows or contrast to dramatise the scene. It’s not drama I was after, but discomfort. This is a space we’ve all seen before, passed by, ignored. But when paused and printed, it forces a question that galleries, curators, and critics have been dancing around for decades: where is the line between art and garbage — and who decides?