Vernon

2019–2025

Vernon takes place at the industrial edge of the city, in landscapes built for labor rather than leisure. These are places of machinery, freight, steel, chemicals, dirt and after-hours work; necessary to modern life, but largely invisible to the people whose lives depend on them.

They are also strangely empty. Removed from the comfort and surveillance of more familiar spaces, the environment can feel hostile at first, then unexpectedly permissive.

Against that weight, Vernon introduces femininity, sexuality, movement and play. What begins with uncertainty often turns into freedom. The harder and more imposing the surroundings become, the more room there seems to be for experimentation, humor and abandon.

The contradiction is central to the series. A traditionally masculine world of heavy labor and physical risk meets an unabashedly feminine one without either being asked to disappear. The landscape remains rough, combustible and potentially dangerous, while the experience inside it can become calm, intimate and strangely safe.

Vernon is also about the parts of modern life that are pushed out of view. Industrial zones sit at the physical margins of cities because society depends on them while preferring not to look at them. They are places where nature has largely been displaced, yet they make the cleaner and more comfortable spaces elsewhere possible.

The series turns toward that hidden edge and allows something else to happen there.

Over time, the place becomes less like a backdrop and more like its own world. People enter cautiously, begin to play, and often want to return. Vernon becomes almost addictive - a place to play, be wild, and be free. The running joke is that eventually they become Vernon girls.

New Souls / 2021

Roller Girl / 2019

Battle of the Currents / 2021

Brothers Gun, photograph from the Vernon series by Michael Donovan

Brothers Gun / 2025

Country/region