Pardington's work in Telecom Prospect 2004 marks a recent shift in his practice. The 2002 photographs - Specimen and Te Whare O Rangiora (Chair) - relate to Pardington's earlier practice, where his subject matter was largely chanced upon: Te Whare O Rangiora (Chair), for example, was shot in a disused psychiatric hospital on a location-scouting trip for the film For Good. The subject matter of the newer works - Chairs and Corridor #2 - is, however, deliberately sought out: these works are drawn from a new project Pardington has undertaken, taking photographs in hospitals throughout New Zealand. While the subject matter of this project (titled 'The Clinic') obviously owes much to the 2002 works, Pardington has now begun to work with larger format cameras, which force the photographer to work more slowly. As the viewer can see, this shift in technical process has subtle but significant results; the more recent photographs appear deeper, richer and less grainy. Perhaps this is where the perfecting eye of the designer - one of Pardington's other guises - meets the roving eye of the photographer.

Despite the unrelenting realism of the photographs - a chair, a corridor, a preserved head - Pardington's not giving anything away with these works. He chooses not to include details of place or date in the titles of his work, a purposeful evasion of the use of photography to 'fix' a moment. Stripped of such information the photographs emphasise the emptiness of the settings, sometimes banal, often unsettling. Pardington's works reach towards a sense of strangeness; as he recently stated in an interview with Stuart McKenzie: 'In the end, you've only got reality to work with as a photographer, you're not creating anything, you're interpreting something, you're framing and gazing - and when reality becomes strange I think that's when it can become very engaging for people.'

Courtney Johnston