Smallwood didn’t learn of the existence of Seneca Village until 2020, when he came across a short-form Vox documentary about it. “I spend so much time here doing so much stuff,” Smallwood said. “How did I not know about this? It was just hurtful.” The “Languor” series became a way to do something about it. “It made me want to go out and photograph the space and try to reflect what I was feeling,” he said.
Smallwood’s photographs, by his own description, started off bleak with stark contrasts, but ultimately became “a love letter to the park and a note about disillusionment, because it’s not this fantasy world that I made it out to be,” he said. “But at the same time, it kind of is.”
