Body of Work Assignment 1; Reflections on Tutor Report

My tutor based his feedback on my blog of the L3 weekend in Barnsley.  He notes from the introduction to my assignment write up that, whilst finding the weekend valuable, it left me floundering somewhat.  He feels that although it is an uncomfortable position to be in, it can be turned to advantage.  He feels that I must not allow myself to escape back into safe and habitual patterns of thinking, which would be an opportunity for creative breakthrough lost.  I agree that it is easy to fall back into safe and comfortable practices, but I hope that by basing my BOW on a sound contextual basis I will continue to challenge myself.  He liked the way that I had experimented with ideas that I gathered from the weekend and need to continue to work on them.  He cautions me against shooting wide with my industrial landscapes with big foregrounds and sky.  It was felt that the 'Walk with Psychogeography' part of my assignment using found objects was too similar to assignment 3 in PWDP and therefore not challenging.  As I find the wood and coast favourite places that I return to, it would be difficult to look at them with fresh eyes and L3 might be a good time to find a fresh subject.  He mentions that basing my work on Eliot Porter (woodland work) may make me work too scientifically for a creative arts degree.  Whilst I agree with this and have come to the same conclusion following the L3 weekend, it is interesting that Graham Clarke includes Porter in his chapter on Fine Art photography in The Photograph with specific reference to Pool in a Brook.  I am going to mull this over and may incorporate the idea into my work.  I like this quote from his report: The scientific approach uses the camera as an instrument to observe and measure the universe around us but Lars von Trier said that the universe within yourself is much more interesting than the one around.

Having read the report and reflected on my work, I have decided to put to one side the work in the wood and along the coast (or anywhere else) using found objects and concentrate on just two aspects from Assignment 1: industrial landscapes/flowers within an industrial landscape and The Water Rail Way/River Witham.

Although I gave the industry aspect in Assignment 1 the two  titles Flowers in an Industrial Setting and Industry within the Landscape, I am planning to combine these two.  At this time of year the flowering season is past us and most images of flowers within an industrial setting will need to wait now until next spring.  Having said that I have changed my focus.  I am still interested in industrial landscapes but am becoming fascinated by how industry and nature coexist, in some cases industrial companies provide space for nature within their environs; for example  Novartis  on the Humber Bank has developed an area adjacent to its plant specifically as a high tide roost for shore birds to rest until they can return to the mudflats to feed.  See below:-

Much of my work in the past has been of the natural world, either landscapes or wildlife but more from a scientific background.  As much as we may hark back to and wish for a bygone rural idyll, wilderness is a thing of the past, if it ever existed.  We only have to look at Scotland, Wales and the Lake District with the preponderance of nuclear power stations and latterly wind farms within their boundaries.  And people in these places have to have work, which is often provided by industry. John Davies' image of Trawsfynydd Power Station in Snowdonia is a prime example.  We all desire the commodities of modern life (food, fuel for our cars, electricity, gas) however 'green' we are.  I am interested in portraying this industry within our rural landscape and also in the coexistence of nature alongside it and of the rewilding of post industrial sites and how nature reclaims its own.  The work being done in Pripyat and Chernobyl by photographers such as Christofer Bennett testifies to this. Having said that, I am interested in the view that nature and landscapes are concepts of western culture and that some animist cultures do not have a word for nature as they feel that they are part of it.

I continue to be interested in the Water Rail Way and the River Witham, which runs alongside it.  I am really excited by this project, as it takes me back to my childhood and youth.  I was born and brought up 30 miles from where I now live in the small Lincolnshire town of Woodhall Spa close to Woodhall Junction on the Lincolnshire Loop railway line which followed the line of the River Witham from Lincoln to Boston and on to the East Coast main line at Peterborough.  In my youth it was possible to catch the train at Woodhall Junction and get off at Kings Cross.  As a young boy and teenager I would often travel to Lincoln on the train and until the early 1960s it was steam hauled.  The line was affected by the cuts brought about by Dr Beeching, closed in 1971 and dismantled.  Dr Beeching was chairman of British Railways and he became a household name in the 1960s for his report The reshaping of British Railways commonly known as The Beeching Report, which resulted in the closure of over 4000 miles of line. The Lincolnshire Loop Line now has a new lease of life as a traffic free cycle and walking route from Lincoln to Boston and forms part of Sustrans Route 1 cycle route and The Viking Way long distance footpath, which runs from the Humber to Oakam in Rutland and follows the path of the upper Witham.  The line followed the course of the River Witham, which has long been well known for angling, especially match fishing and special angling trains ran from Sheffield until 1969.  At the weekends several trains would be waiting in the sidings at Woodhall Junction to take them all home.   In my younger years I was a keen angler and a regular on the Witham.  One of my fondest childhood memories is of being taken to the signal box at nearby Stixwould Station to have my haircut and, on one occasion, my finger 'put back into joint' by the signal man, who doubled as barber and bone setter.   Several of the old stations have recently been converted to quirky homes.   I have cycled much of this route and photographed the journey, along with the old stations and the black and white photographs of days gone by on the many information boards along the line.  The cycle route has been named the Water Rail Way to encompass railway, river and wildlife.

The upper River Witham rises in the limestone hills of the Lincoln Edge and is a fast flowing chalk stream, whereas the lower river is canalized for transport and is slower and more turgid.  Interestingly, the fact that the river cuts through the limestone at the Lincoln gap, enabled Lincoln to develop as a communications hub with river, rail and road transport.  In the centre of Lincoln it opens up to become The Brayford Pool, once a busy industrial waterfront with excellent views to Lincoln's stunning cathedral.  All of this is tied in with my childhood memories of the area.  It rises just west of the A1 between Stamford and Grantham, flows north to Lincoln and then south east to Boston where it flows out into the sea in The Wash.  Coming from Lincolnshire, I am also fascinated by The Brook by Lincolnshire Poet Laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson, which as well as describing the course of a river is also an allegory of Life.  In the last stanza the brook curves and finally joins the brimming river.  Tennyson concludes with the words For men may come and men may go but I go on for ever. which shows the transient life of human beings in contrast to the eternal life of the river.  Even though the brook ends, it becomes part of the river, which flows out to sea and so it continues to flow endlessly.

I could treat these projects as two separate bodies of work, but I wonder if they could be combined; after all the Water Rail Way is a rewilding of a long disused railway line and both the line and the canal/river were a hub of industry in years gone by, even back to Roman times and beyond.