The body of work evolved from a series of regular night walks undertaken over a 12-month period (2020 – 2021). The pictures were made within a 1-mile radius of the artists’ home in south London. The contiguity and darkness in the work creates a tension between interior and exterior, mind and world, familiar and strange. The sequence and edit, knits together an uneasy psycho geography of fact and fiction, vernacular and otherworldly; a somnambulistic account of nocturnal curiosity and quotidian peculiarity. The title of the book alludes to proximity and introspection, and also acknowledges the sensibility and atmosphere evoked by the music and lyrics of the Joy Division album of the same name.

Neil Drabble is an artist and academic, he lives and works in London.