Tom Blachford's Midnight Modern: Uncanny Cali

Even if you've never been to California, you may find something eerily familiar about Tom Blachford's Midnight Modern series. The images that the photographer captured around the affluent Palm Springs by the light of the full moon - of painstakingly manicured front laws, squat geometric architecture, and sparklingly clean cars - are hyperreal, taking us to the uncanny valley of the kinds of places we've only seen in movies and on TV.

Blachford was able to gain access to some very private architectural gems including Kaufmann Desert House and Frank Sinatra Twin Palms House for the photo series. He has a way of connecting the familiar with the surreal by transforming man-made structures into mysterious and hedonistic dreams. Everything in these photos seems just a little too perfect, giving a menacing quality to the silvery moonlight, and the glow that lights the omnipresent palm trees from below.

In the same way that a filmmaker like David Lynch emulates the dark allure of Tinseltown, Blachford takes us to a place that is beautiful and unknowable - at the same time aspirational and repulsive. Seen full-size, the images may envelope the viewer in the stillness and quietness of the warm Palm Springs nights on which they were taken.

Darlinghurst's Black Eye Gallery will be exhibiting Tom Blachford's Midnight Modern series from April 18th to 30th, with the photographer himself signing copies of his photographic book on April 20th. See the Sydney Scoop Calendar for details.