Author: Ellis Stevenson

In 2015, the sea hardly ever appeared calm on the rocky beaches of Lesbos. On the horizon, tiny rubber dinghies continued to appear—sometimes twenty in a day, sometimes fifty. They appeared nearly innocuous from a distance—tiny black shapes floating against a blue Mediterranean sky. However, the scene felt heavier than any headline could convey as I stood closer to the shore and watched families climb out of those boats. This caught the attention of photographers almost immediately. not only the number of people migrating to Europe, but also their individual faces. A teenager clutching a cracked smartphone as though it…

When strolling through a city, there comes a point at which the sidewalk suddenly takes on greater interest than the actual buildings. A mural of a weary face painted in turquoise is displayed on a rusted metal shutter, partially pulled down over a corner store. Stickers—band logos, political slogans, and mysterious tags stacked on top of one another like a visual journal of years gone by—cover a utility box nearby. No one bought tickets to see it. A curator did not set the lighting. However, people pause, look, and occasionally snap pictures. In contrast to the polished silence of many…

The sound of the machinery never quite stops in a North Yorkshire vegetable processing plant. Bright inspection lights flicker against the metal walls, conveyors hum, and carrots rattle across steel rollers. A machine somewhere along that line is tasked with the straightforward task of determining which vegetables are worthy of being seen by customers. It feels oddly clinical to watch the process take place. For a brief moment, an optical scanner examines the shape of each carrot as it passes underneath. Vegetables that are perfectly straight go on. With a blast of air, the crooked ones—split, twisted, slightly bent—are ejected…

It is easy to see how cruel contemporary food standards can be when one is inside a North Yorkshire vegetable sorting facility. Carrots pass through a device that looks like an airport scanner as they move along a conveyor belt under bright industrial lights. The Focus device analyzes each carrot’s shape with mechanical precision in a matter of seconds. The vegetable is ejected from the belt by a sudden burst of air if it curves too sharply or splits slightly close to the root. Perfect carrots keep going. The flawed ones disappear. Photographer Tim Smyth may have found his subject…

Hotel rooms have an understatedly eerie quality—the carpets with patterns. The lamps were the same. Even when muted, the television hummed softly as it was fastened to the wall. While on assignments that took him all over Britain and beyond, from Dublin to Los Angeles, Tim Smyth started to notice this sameness. Although each room is unique, they are uncannily similar. This may be where In Your Absence really started—not in a kitchen, but in those unidentified areas that seem detached from reality. His partner was back in the kitchen in Nunhead, south London. On the counter, a loaf of…