Jack Adam tackles voyeurism and surreal domesticity in Doll House

The project, Doll House by photographer Jack Adam, captures snippets of life through the windows of houses. The position the photographer takes outside each home provides an intrusion into the lives of the subjects (who are all models), and places the viewer in the role of a voyeur, allowing them to ask questions of the lives they are peering into. “It is a phantasmagorical illustration of privacy in the 21st century and through this, it attempts to define the fabricated lives that we live,” says Jack.

The images are sequenced so that the sun appears to be disappearing as the series progresses, blue hues gradually submit to an inky black. “I set up each image about an hour before I wanted to shoot it so that I would have time to organise the furniture and lights in the home that I was working in. I do not own any lighting equipment besides a speedlite and foldable reflector, thus Doll House was created with lamps, flashlights, and smartphones,” says Jack. “I wanted to use domestic and ambient lighting to create a believable environment that felt as if it were being observed.”

The series is shot in Brooklyn, the Catskills Mountains and southern Connecticut and was completed in January 2016. “I wanted to create an air of mystery, but I did not want the subjects in the images to be acting in a deliberately mysterious way,” says the photographer. “I told them to act naturally, as if they did not see me, and to go about their day. I was adamant about making sure that the subjects were not just standing in the window, but that they were actively engaged in an action, even if that action was hard to put words to.”