Fairground Attraction – Christopher Rimmer's Vision of Luna Park

British photographer, Christopher Rimmer transformed a well-known 100 year old theme park in his adopted home town of Melbourne, Australia into a spooky, unsettling, yet beautiful vison with a series of large scale photographs which are being exhibited at the Port Jackson Press Gallery in Melbourne throughout March, 2016.
Rimmer who confesses he finds amusement fairgrounds to be unsettling and slightly unnerving places, photographed the celebrated land mark ‘Luna Park ‘in both summer when it was full of people and also during the winter months when it was deserted, but always at night. Through a series of large photographs, the multi award winning photographer presents Luna Park as a sinister and monovalent place and its gaping mouth gate as an entry point into a parallel universe of chaos and distortion rather than a place of amusement and frivolity.
Commenting on the fact that theme parks often have eerie undertones, Rimmer suggests they do so because they offer an alternative reality and despite this reality being manufactured, the concept has within itself the potential to represent a darker psychological experience.
He adds, ‘During daylight hours, theme parks appear innocuous and somewhat forlorn, but when night falls they are transformed into something far more primitive and enticing. That is what I was trying to communicate in a visual sense when I undertook this project.’