As concrete expressions of the aspiration to global harmony and order the United Nations headquarters in New York and Geneva are superlative instances of design. In the photographs I made of these twin seats of world government I sought to isolate and accentuate some of their most salient features. Translator booths. Delegates’ chairs with their dangling earpieces. Water jugs and glasses on hand to soothe the many-tongued speakers’ vocal chords. Here, in these buildings where communication is paramount, it would seem that every least word and gesture is controlled, directed and at times facilitated or hindered by the furnishings and surrounding walls.

In total I spent a fortnight in these twin headquarters in an attempt to tease out their unconscious agendas and repressed narratives which, thanks to my large-format camera’s unrelenting squint, can here and there be seen poking through.

In one picture two diametrically opposed rows of microphones bristle at one another across a conference table, a sign of conflicts past, present and to come. In another a bank of elegant curved chrome coatracks, one corner slightly dented. Beside them the deadpan reminder, ‘The management refuses all responsibility’.