Untitled Landscape Part 7

'Whilst unprepossessing in scale, Sophy Ricketts photographs have the ability to bewilder, their subject matter floating without context amidst black expanses. Indeed, the unerring flawlessness of these black areas, common to all the images, can enthral you with a tinge of delirium. Your spatial sensors are thwarted as the black backdrops subsume any detail that may offer evidence of perspective, for this is the darkest and smoothest black that a darkroom can elicit from light-sensitive paper. Furthermore, this blanket removal of references to pictorial space, and its relationship to the three-dimensional, imbues Ricketts views of nocturnal vistas with a tangible frisson of the night. Released from a dependence upon perspectives symbolic implications of a certain order, Ricketts images offer the possibility of another reality, one less grounded and fathomable. These are scenarios that could happily accommodate the wayward thoughts of the insomniac. As you peer into the darkness you hazard guesses as to the probable lie of the
land, and, more potently, to what may be lurking out there'
(I. Glover, Sophy Rickett, in frieze, Issue 60, June-August 2001)