Matthew Dunne

Tell us more about this image and your series “It’s Spring and I’m Alone” ?
One a weekday morning I was waiting for the train to go to work. I decided to walk to the other end of the station and came upon this random cake, barely touched and completely left alone from the night before. There was a beautiful light from sun rise, so I took the picture, as I felt there was something lonely and discarded about a Happy Birthday cake.

A few months later I uploaded the picture to social media, and a good friend called me. She told me that the cake had been given to her by a patient at the pharmacy that she works at. This patient had a bit of a crush on her and this gift was a bit too much, she didn’t want it. She left it at her work place and when she returned from her lunch break it had gone. Until I took a photo of it.

More generally, my series is about the feeling of abandonment and isolation – how they form and consume and give way. On my girlfriend’s birthday she flew away from Australia and I was upset, pissed off and forced to be alone. At the same time Spring was starting and colours were becoming beautiful and people were happy and alive. So in many ways those things made me feel worse – that the world was waking up and joyful, but that I felt like a funeral.

Towards the end of the series the images are more happy and playful, as my period of isolation was ending – after 5 months I left to join my girlfriend overseas.

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Matthew Dunne – 26, live in Cambridge, England now, but until last month Melbourne, Australia was his home.