Closer is a new body of work by photographer Neil Drabble thatevolved from a series of regular night walks he undertook over a 12-month period (2020 – 2021) and provides an interesting contrast with the editorial and portrait photography for which he is internationally renowned.

All of the pictures were made within a one mile radius of Drabble's 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 psychogeography of fact and fiction, vernacular and otherworldly; a somnambulistic account of nocturnal curiosity and quotidian peculiarity. The title of the book, Closer, 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.

Double Obelisk Editions, 304pp, 15cm x 21cm, softcover with dust jacket, 2023