Caprina Valentine
photographer

Locked // Photo Series

An ongoing visual contemplation of public versus private spaces in the urban environment, 2004 – present

In 2004, I began to photograph locks of all shapes and sizes in my second year in Visual Arts at the University of Victoria. As more and more alleyways and hidden spaces closed to public access, I became fascinated with the relationships between public versus private spaces and how private ownership is ingrained and unquestioned in North American culture. I thought about questions such as: What makes a space public? Or private? What is ownership? Is ownership just a highly defined and documented version of the same territorial instincts we see in the wild? Where did the concept originate and was it just enforced with the person who had the bigger stick? Is it still?

“As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

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