I Saw You

I Saw You is the first volume in what Bruce Connew conceived as a loose trilogy of artist's books examining private life under observation. Over twelve months, Connew trained a telephoto lens on Balaena Bay car park in Wellington from his own home, photographing people going about ordinary business in what they assumed was a private, unwatched moment in public space. The resulting images are square-format and color, cropped and reworked to a degree unusual for a photographer known for defending his frames unaltered, producing pictures that read as blurred, almost painterly studies of anonymous figures. Connew has described the project as a comment on living in a surveillance society, on being watched without knowing it. The book was designed by Connew's partner Catherine Griffiths and published by his own imprint, Vapour Momenta Books, in 2007; the 52-image series also showed at Mary Newton Gallery in Wellington that year, with a related film by Griffiths using the same images.