The Moor by 40 year-old British photographer Robert Darch is a series that mixes portraits and landscape photographs playing on the line between reality and fiction and inspired by Dartmoor, an upland area in England where Robert used to go on vacation as a child.
Drawing on childhood memories of Dartmoor alongside influences from contemporary culture, the narrative references local and universal mythology to give context but suggests something altogether more unknown. The realisation of this dystopian future is specifically in response to a perceived uncertainty of life in the modern world and a growing disengagement with humanitarian ideals. The Moor portrays an eerie world that shifts between large open vistas, dark forests, makeshift dwellings, uncanny visions and isolated figures.
The fiction is grounded within the landscapes of Dartmoor, using found locations instead of overt staging, artificial lights or constructed sets. Shifting between pseudo documentary and constructed photography the Moor blurs that liminal space between fiction and reality.
