In December 2006 the hospital in which Rob Ball was born closed after 97 years of service. The site was bought by a property developer and will soon consist of over 800 new dwellings, in an effort to meet the governments target for three million new homes by the year 2020. The project by Rob Ball is a series of large format photographs, which show the functional spaces as the last user left them, from the maternity block to the morgue. All the images are taken from inside the hospital in an effort to compound the claustrophobia often felt in institutional spaces. The title of the series ‘The Grange’ is taken from the original name of the hospital when in started life as a convalescence home for children before the First World War. Rob Ball’s photographs draw as much on his experience as a forensic and crime scene photographer as their personal subject matter. His matter-of-fact documentary style acts as the eye, but leaves us free to interpret the work without overt mediation. Nathalie Palin |