Hide and Seek: The Dubious Nature of Plant Life in High Security Spaces (2012)

Hide and Seek is a landmark documentary photography project created by the photojournalist Adam Walker-Smith.

Instigated by his discovery of the landscape design programme Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, Walker-Smith realised that high security public spaces in London, which present themselves as being free and open, actually covertly guide behaviour through landscape design and monitor human activities through extensive surveillance infrastructure. The reason these things are not often observed is because they are carefully hidden and softened by the strategic deployment of vegetation. This illuminating finding led to what could only be described as Walker-Smith’s intense paranoia as to the ‘innocence’ of all plant life in these spaces. His resulting photographs dramatically expose what he sees as the ‘suspect’ plants of securitised urban spaces (so-called for posing as ‘innocent’ decoration whilst actually being hidden parts of the security apparatus).

Detailed on this page are excerpts from the photojournalist’s research into the use of plants by corporate landscape designers, accompanied by a select number of his photographic observations.