I took this picture in the 1980’s for a Nursing Times article about homelessness.
I feel it will always be relevant.

I took this picture in the 1980’s for a Nursing Times article about homelessness.
I feel it will always be relevant.
Earthbound life takes root
Petty minds find empty words
World in flames consumes
Hope’s hand reaches out
Striving hard against the gain
Ambition’s sharp bite
Quite a lot of photographs have hidden stories (metanarratives) which, due to the fleeting nature of casual observers, might be missed. So, instead of lengthy texts describing them I have been dabbling with adding text to the images in the form of poetry. Yes, me, poetry, haha! Haiku or more often senryu to be precise. This probably makes things even more obscure but it does add another dimension and it makes you look a little closer and maybe ask questions…
This was my first home though, it was a bit different then. It’s now sheltered housing for retired folk. Back in the 1950’s it was called Temperance Place and was two rows of slum terraces separated by a patch of wasteland. The houses were two-up-two-downs. No bathroom – outside privy and a tin bath in the back yard.
The shadow of the old style gas streetlight is a fake. Lincoln once had beautifully elegant streetlights which were replaced in more recent times with clumsily designed fake olde-worlde versions – shadows of what they once were (see what I did there?).
From an existential perspective a photograph is time frozen into a discrete moment. The stuff in the photograph will never be seen again in exactly the same way – the world has moved on. Similarly, shadows cannot exist without light. Photographing your own shadow is evidence that something once existed, tagging the landscape, saying I was here…
Erik the tiny viking welcomes ramblers to the Viking Way…
Back to the beach, again! With the North Sea Observatory and the wind turbines it could almost be another planet.
Cottam power station has been decommissioned and the turbine hall demolished. Should at least one of these structures be preserved? They are a monument to the 20th century, and the folly of an age of fossil fuel that has brought us to the virtual destruction of the planet as we know it. Seen in a more romantic light they are also a kind of modern Stonehenge. Almost unimaginable structures that dominate the landscape like no other structure.
It’s been almost a year and my mojo has finally returned. The past year I have continued to wander the landscape like some sort of misdirected pilgrim.
So, here we go again – NATIONAL LANDSCAPE is the latest chapter of Jerusalem. It’s black and white, back to basics! I was always happier with black and white. How can it seem more natural than colour? I guess there’s some irony there given the subject of the project. You might get that better when you read on. Find out more here…