Insomnia - Under Construction is a chapter of my long-term project Insomnia, made during a month-long journey through Canada. I photographed cities and their outskirts at dusk and after dark, focusing on the collision between rapidly developing metropolitan landscapes and the ordered, seemingly stable world of the suburbs. Construction sites, fences, road markings, detached houses and ordinary pieces of infrastructure became signs of a space continually organised, protected and rebuilt.
I photographed these places without people. Artificial light isolates architecture and everyday objects, making them appear staged and suspended between document and fiction. From the position of an outsider, the familiar becomes slightly displaced: the city resembles a model, while the suburban promise of safety acquires an uncanny quality.
The title Under Construction refers not only to physical development. It also describes a landscape whose identity remains unfinished — shaped by movement, regulation and the continuous negotiation between openness and separation.
Selected works are available as limited-edition archival pigment prints (edition of 5 + 1 AP). For enquiries: info@tomekalbin.com