Edgar Martins was born in Évora but grew up in Macau. In 1996 he moved to the UK, where he later completed an MA in Photography and Fine Art at the Royal College of Art. His work is represented internationally in several high-profile collections, such as those of the V&A (London), the National Media Museum (Bradford, UK), the DallasMuseum of Art (USA); Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisbon), Fundação EDP (Lisbon), Fondation Carmignac (Paris), among others. This series of images, entitled ‘A Metaphysical Survey of British Dwellings’, is beautifully lit, and looks like a typical suburban town after midnight.

Here’s the catch: It is shot entirely in a mock-up town built in 2003 to train the Firearms and Public Order Units of the UK’s Metropolitan Police, this series deals with urbanism in all its contradictoriness and ambiguity. This ultra-realistic specialist training centre is not just a pastiche of contemporary British towns but in Martins’ words it ‘also acts as a metaphor for the modern asocial city’.

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