Trevor Raab, Interdimensional, 2015

With a background in street photography, Trevor Raab was accustomed to capturing fleeting moments during his walks around Rochester, New York. Playing GTA V Online with his brother introduced him to a new sense of place and virtual space. Intrigued by the game’s possibilities and its relationship to physical reality, Raab began pointing his camera at the game screen instead of using screenshots, seamlessly continuing his exploration from the streets of Rochester to those of Los Santos.

Both the selection of images that makes the publication Interdimensional and the printed format align strongly with the tradition of street photography and an examination of a place, its lived spaces and infrastructures. Reminiscent of Stephen Shore’s Uncommon Places, Raab’s Interdimensional paints an eerie portrait of Los Santos and Blaine County. The photographer focuses his camera on desolate urban landscapes and places of ambiguous personal importance: the shadow of a plant being cast on a carpet floor, two cut tree trunks on the side of the street 'looking' in opposite directions, a liquor store with a sign lighting up at sunset.

These moments and scenes, which lie at the margins of the main gameplay and are secondary details in the game’s open world, become the centre of the attention of the photographer. Moving from the wide natural landscapes to the urban scenes, and from the major landmarks to the minor spaces of everyday life, Raab captures an emotional space that extends the navigation of the physical world to the virtual environment. A sense of melancholy and loneliness is accompanied by an intimate scrutiny that guides the viewer to a personal lived experience through the paths across the game screen.

Through Raab’s shots, the game ceases to be a mere digital entertainment experience and becomes a parallel 'inter-dimension' that extends the physical world into a liminal space. Here, as mundane small and personal moments and locations are extracted through the photographic series, an ambiguous sense of place emerges, which slightly shakes the viewer’s sense of reality and even belonging.

More by Trevor Raab: trevorraab.com