In 2020, Gabriel Buca shot a roll of expired black and white Kodak TMAX 3200 and shot it around Bournemouth at night. The resulting photographs were filled with grain and highly obscured, resulting in a mix of atmospheric and surreal photographs. In 2021, Gabriel revisited the photographs and set out to recreate their atmospheric and surreal nature, through methods such as pushing film and using different ISO films. Experimenting with both day and night, domestic, street, landscape, self-portraits, and constructed scene photography, Gabriel quickly found himself with a large number of photographs exploring this atmospheric and surreal type of photography through different genres of photography. With each shoot, the artist realized that the photographs were increasingly reflective of his own emotions and that they became externalized through the photographs he was taking.

“DARK, Dark, dark!” is a photo book, montaging the artist’s various shoots into a series of different, seemingly, disconnected, surreal, narratives, which aim at presenting the complex externalized emotions of the artist. The photo book utilizes the action of turning the page, the surface of the paper, as well as patterns separating and breaking the narratives, to further the meaning of the photographs. The viewer is invited to embark on the surreal journey and create their own understanding of the book through their own experiences and emotions. No interpretation of the book is wrong.