How do we make space meaningful; turn space into place? How do we experience and occupy place? Small Ecologies presents a series of environmental portraits and detail studies, to explore the personal ecology of occupied space. The work is a visual and photographic exploration of the character of small scale spaces, shaped and occupied by individual human beings.



Small Ecologies underlines the details of everyday spaces, details which are known intimately but lie beneath notice for most of the time. As a photographer entering the space of another, Damian Hughes instinctively pays attention to these details of place and emphasises the direct connection between individual human beings and the places they occupy. Each place has its own, distinctive character, shaped by an individual human being, responding to space, its constraints, their own needs and personality.



As the American photographer Paul Strand said, “Things become interesting as soon as the human element enters in.”