Caroline Willis

Where the Grid Ends

Combining journalistic research with analog, medium format photography, “Where the Grid Ends” explores the horror women-identifying park-goers can experience in urban wooded areas by looking at Manhattan’s Inwood Hill Park. 
I was interested in how a place that is supposed to offer peace and respite can simultaneously be a place of fear. My images focus on these moments where past acts of violence seemed to have seeped into the soil with the only indicator of their happening lying in a crumpled newspaper or hanging rope. 
The images are paired alongside archival materials from my research as well as text, which contextualizes the images with historical explanations and descriptions of feelings evoked from being in the park. These mediums come together in book format where images of an idyllic park are put into perspective by the reveal of a violent history.