This image is from a larger series Tim Veling called Vestiges – a word for traces left behind by things now absent. Across a five-year period following the 22 February 2011 earthquake, he bore witness to the slow disintegration of a once-tight Avonside neighbourhood as it gradually joined the ‘red-zone’ of houses and streets deemed unable to be rebuilt. It was a controversial and painful process; its impact is still felt by many. Veling’s photographs are sad, strange and sometimes beautiful. Here, once carefully tended, now overgrown gardens have become the resting place for a generation of balls – remnants of lives abruptly disrupted and relocated.

(Absence, May 2023)