Keeping the Lights On

Keeping the Lights On is a photographic project about illegal dumping in Portugal and the domestic lives that remain inside it. The sites sit along backroads and near motorways, hidden from view but easy to access. What is abandoned there is more than waste. Beds, wardrobes, toys, lamps, clothing and family objects collect in the landscape, forming the remains of entire households. I begin by searching for these places, driving through the areas around where I live and using satellite maps to identify spaces that are accessible but concealed.

At each site, I spend time looking through what has been left behind. I collect objects that appear to belong together and use them to reconstruct the room they may once have occupied. Four rooms are built in total. Each reconstruction is assembled on location using only discarded materials found at the site. Once complete, the room is lit and photographed, temporarily resembling a home again. The work is concerned with this transformation. An object can move from private possession to public waste without physically changing.

A chair still functions as a chair. A lamp still gives light. What changes is the way it is seen. By rebuilding these domestic spaces, I am not trying to restore their original stories. Those remain unknown. Instead, I give the objects a temporary structure in which they can be noticed again. Keeping the Lights On asks what we decide is worth keeping, what becomes invisible once it is discarded, and whether attention itself can return value to something abandoned.