My Midnight Garden
This project was inspired by a children’s book I read at age eight. In the story, a boy discovers a secret garden at night where time stands still. Years later, a friend found the book again—and it became the spark for this project.
For two years, I used a wildlife camera hidden in my own backyard. I then transformed the captured images into cyanotypes, giving them a timeless, ethereal quality.
The origin of My Midnight Garden lies in a childhood memory. When I was about eight years old, I read a book from the library that never truly left me. It was about a boy who stepped through a large clock at night and entered a secret garden – a place where time stood still and adventures awaited him. Although I had forgotten the title and author, the image stayed with me.
Years later, I told a friend about it. To my surprise, she managed to track down the book and gave it to me as a birthday gift. That moment felt like a puzzle piece finally falling into place – and it set something in motion.
I decided to capture the atmosphere of that story in images. Armed with a trail camera, I began recording what happened at night in my backyard, which borders a nature reserve. Deer, foxes, owls – but also scenes that evoked that dreamy, timeless feeling I had experienced as a child.
And that’s how My Midnight Garden came to be: a fusion of nature, imagination, and the sense of childlike wonder that still lives somewhere within me.