Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction typically set in a dystopian future cityscape teeming with advanced technology, saturated with neon lights and plagued with crime, social inequality and crumbling infrastructure.

As an anthropologist and artist who grew up in Kingston, Jamaica and emigrated many years before the rise of social media, artificial intelligence and many other contemporary technologies, I am fascinated by the city’s balance of hypermodernity and decay. It is a place where kaleidoscopic color radiates from everything in the urban landscape – pedestrians, electronic billboards, decrepit concrete walls and the wildly stylish yeng-yeng motorcycles which have come to symbolize transgression and danger. It is a place where the militarisation of everyday life is reflected in security fencing, gated communities and constant policing of the poor.

The photo series Tropical Cyberpunk views Kingston and its environs through the lens of dystopian futurism. Part visual ethnography, part world-building, these images collectively re-imagine the city as a high-tech, otherworldly metropolis in all its beauty and squalor, nestled in lush vegetation and awash in iridescent hues.

Tropical Cyberpunk is a critique of the post-colonial state and its failure to deliver on the utopian promise of national independence, but it is also a vibrant celebration of the creativity and resilience of the Jamaican people who continuously make and remake this dynamic, fast-moving and highly innovative urban culture.