Looking for Jodie (Amityville)
2003
Colour photographs
76 cm x 101.5 cm

 The town of Amityville, New York has always generated a strange fascination in the public consciousness. A book and feature film in the 1970’s chronicled a true story about a series of supernatural phenomena that occurred in a house there. As a result of this ‘true story’ the town’s existence in the psyche is an amalgam of fiction and truth, reality and the mediated image have merged to create an alternate perception of the place itself. This project attempts to explore this alternate perception examining the crossover point of a memory based on cinematic experience and the memory and experience of real events or places.

 Over the course of twelve months I traveled to the town to complete a series of photographs in the neighbourhood near the original house. Taken at various times during the day and night the photographs explore this modern day myth examining the crossover point of a memory based on cinematic experience and the experience of the real place. The title, Looking for Jodie, refers to a spectral character from the book and film, suggesting a presence beyond the frame edge, outside the narrative flow of the photographic instant.