Field Trip
In August the Peebles Show arrived on the flat ground opposite Horsburgh Ford on the North coast of our territory.
Here, in the febrile, pre-referendum atmosphere the…
Two Parallel Universes
It is almost impossible here, on the Isle of Lewis and Harris, not to take beautiful images of landscape. The scale and elemental nature of the landscape, coupled with the…
Margate #2
Maragte’s heady days as a premier UK holiday destination may be well and truly over but a period of regeneration is in full swing with artists and entrepreneurs reinvigorating the town centre…
Slept on your arm again
You wake up in fits around the thing, try to shake some life into it. Reach with the good, other arm for wedding ring, phone and glasses, in that order. A shower, quick. A coffee, quickly after. Out on the balcony to just point your eyes at the…
What a difference a month makes
Documenting Britain for me feels a bit like a journal, its my monthly sit down on the laptop where I reflect and assess the previous months activity and…
Ellesmere Port
I was going to say that I have never visited Ellesmere Port before but then I noticed Cheshire Oaks retail park as I left and that would have meant I was telling porkies. I met a…
March 5, 2015
Heartlands #3
After a few weeks of driving around and making landscapes I soon felt the need for some human contact. I wanted to meet I was faced with the challenge of…
As Cold As Clay
Throughout the course of 2014, I’ve visited David frequently, documenting his daily routines, listening to his memories, fears, dreams and frustrations as he has navigated a year filled…
Accrington
My Dad was born in Lancashire and having turned seventy recently decided to make a trip up to Accrington to photograph all the houses from his youth and beyond. I asked to…
February 28, 2015
Chester
I have started to revisit some of the places that I had difficulties with previously. When I went to Chester last time I aborted my mission as I felt that…
February 25, 2015
The Ross of Mull
I’m finally getting round to editing and processing some of the material I produced for Northlands last summer. It quite often takes me a while to catch up with this, but I find…
The same picture
I left Leeds with too much luggage to carry the geraniums, so when my mum visited last month she brought me the Mother Plant and a selection of her descendants. I met her…
What My Father Didn’t Tell Me
language
he said
that dead space
far side
of our garden wall
where willow-herb
thrives on negligence
and the best
of my apples
fell.
Suspended Landscapes
Documenting interconnected landscapes through East Anglia, Essex and then along the Thames gateway to the shores of Kent. Exploring how the edges and peripheries of…
Wet Plate Collodion
Wet plate collodion is a photographic process dating from 1851 and was the primary method of capturing images on glass or metal plates from the early 1850s until the 1880s…
February 15, 2015
Catcher
The territory to the South of the Tweed is a temporary zone, uncertain land, occasional riverbed. Before the advent of the B7088 this was Horsburgh Ford, well enough known to…
Little words of Love
Writing this post during the annual Valentine’s Day frenzy, I wanted to include a couple of poems on the theme of love.
The postcard poem here…
February 14, 2015
A non-pedestrian city
On New Year’s Day 2015 I was in Aberdeen. The city was quiet, asleep. I took this opportunity to record a short walk in the city centre – a document of the city at rest…
Young Activist: Katy at the ‘Dead Wall’
In 1869, a battle of wills and money was going on in Glasgow. Before the building of the new suburb of North Kelvinside on the southern edge of Maryhill…
Mell-Moorie
Last year I spent the winter in Shetland, where we had an unusually mild, snowless winter. This year I have spent the winter in Edinburgh, where temperatures have so far been too warm for any snow to linger on the pavements. For now, the memory of snow will have to suffice…
and then
we were nowhere;
[…]
A journey to Stornaway
Light falling. In the austere landscape between Easter and Wester Ross, twilight darkens occasionally framing rooms of strange luminous geometry, glimpsed through undrawn curtains…
Teenage Wildlife
At this precise moment I am in the very early stages of planning a couple of new projects. This involves research, maps, thinking (a lot of thinking) and most of all time…
Winsford
A change of plan today as I had intended to go to Alderley Edge however I saw on my calendar that I had an appointment in Winsford so I went there instead…
February 12, 2015
Surfing Viking Bay
Whilst cycling along the costal path between Margate and Ramsgate on a cold, wet and windy Saturday, the last thing I thought I would encounter as I rounded the headland was a…
Mordançage Unst
Another island and another process. Experimenting at the moment with Mordançage, lots of bleaching and redevelopment involved, leaving room for all sorts of…
It's only Rock'n'Roll but I like it...
Its taken a while but Ive finally managed to combine my two great passions: Music and Glass into one recognisable and tangible project which will…
Altrincham
I’m transitioning to becoming self employed which means the usual sixteen hour days. It’s all stuff I enjoy so it’s a privilege however it was good to get a break today and do my weekly…
February 5, 2015
The North-West Corner
Over the Christmas break I revisited the northwest tip of Sutherland - the villages of Durness and Kinlochbervie - looking to explore the human landscape of these remote…
McArthur's Store
McArthur’s Store is an ongoing series of work made within the dwindling fishing community of Dunbar, a small town on Scotland’s Eastern Seaboard. For two summers…
February 1, 2015
100 Weeks of Scotland
My second book in three months came out at the start of December and most of my time has been spent promoting it and ding events related to it…
The view from your balcony, or “On Photographing The Things You Should.”
A brittle layer of sugary snow and the last of the wind-tossed leaves makes underfoot conditions treacherous…
Making Colours Sing
One of the important elements of this project for me will be the opportunity to highlight the precarious nature of glass education in Scotland. As an…
Nelson Project #2
This is the Glasgow Herald, published the day after the Castlecary Rail Disaster in which my grandfather was killed. My Grandma must have kept it…
Lewis and Berneray
The Outer Hebrides, one of my favourite places in the world, and certainly amongst the most beautiful. After camping in the tail of a hurricane for two days…
High Rise Aberdeen
“Only one large municipality in the UK—the City of Aberdeen—managed to bypass completely the political and professional rejection of high flats, and carry on building them…
Arterial-Ephemeral
The B7088 runs across the flow of its location. The higher, Western Borders is defined by steep sided valleys, well scoured by glaciers. There is a sense of linearity…
The Red Jan Line
23.12.14
I am spending Christmas in Leeds this year. I write this from my childhood bedroom, which has been taken over by my grandmother’s geraniums…
January 30, 2015
Shoreham-by-Sea
Shoreham-by-Sea is a seaside town and port in West Sussex, England between the city of Brighton & Hove and the town of Worthing. It has a population of around 18,000…
Words from underground
True to my project name, I’ve been scavenging words and phrases from a whole range of different sources. I particularly like doing this with posters and…
An Apple, a Boulder, a Mountain
With this in her hand, everything is possible: mountains will wither into fruit, fruit will blossom into stones, stones will listen for…
Generation Pink
These photographs are from a series I’ve been working on for the past four years. It’s a documentary project recording the overwhelming presence and…
January 30, 2015
Above the Clouds
Above the land are the clouds, and above them is our imagination. It’s a landscape of possibilities we can’t reach but perceive beyond our senses. I focus on…
Andrea and The Children's Wood
This project starts by skirting around the edge, crossing the River Kelvin and dipping a toe into Maryhill. Some call this area North Kelvinside…
January
A while after the family photo was taken in Adrianouple 1895 my great grandmother Eleni by who I take my middle name died from trying to to induce an abortion eating Ergot…
Heartlands
New projects are born out of a germ of interest, an idea and a yearning to make or create. So after years of travelling between Edinburgh and Glasgow I began to explore…
Yurden - A Circle Poem
Recently, my project has brought me to think a lot about loss – or, at least, absence. I came across an old burial formula in a book about…
The Elephant in the House
My paperwork has cleared with The Western Isles Council, my background checks completed. The final stage of the taxi license process is to…
North and South Thanet
After reading an article describing some of Britain’s Eastern costal towns as the ‘front line’ in UKIP’s fight to gain seats in…
Congleton
Congleton is one of those towns that I was aware of in my youth. It was part of the vernacular of everyday conversations with my family and friends but apart from going to the…
January 27, 2015
St Helens
When I was in Haydock I photographed a woman dressed in red with a scarf around her face. She said at the time “I’m an actress and would you do my head shots?”…
January 19, 2015
Tarporley
The impish weather is playing with me at the moment but I guess that this can only be expected in mid winter. I look at my radar weather app…
January 13, 2015
Crewe
I am using this diary to document a process, a creative process, so it’s important to talk about the lows as well as the highs as they are an inevitable…
January 10, 2015
Llandrindod Wells, Wales
For the last two Christmases we have come to The Metropole Hotel in Llandrindod Wells, Wales. Last year I joked that it looked like…
December 24, 2014
December
I am idly googling the Elgin Marbles that were removed from the Parthenon in Athens in the beginning of the 1700th century by the Scottish nobleman and ambassador…
Disappeared People
When I first heard of the Picts several years ago, it was only a brief mention of their complete disappearance from Scotland. That sounded very definite and mysterious…
This Is Scotland
For the past two years I have been working on two books. Both projects are now complete and one of the books This Is Scotland has just been…
Where Are We? An Introduction.
Wincobank from a series on Le Tour de France in Yorkshire, 2014.
During a recent portfolio review, I remarked that it’s sometimes important to step…
Spiders & Beetles
Today I am working in my studio finalising glass pieces for the forthcoming Absent Voices exhibition taking place later in November. So far today I have painted…
Nelson Project
In my years as a filmmaker, I have never known a finished film to bear much resemblance to the initial idea and impulse to make it. Along the way ideas…
Reflective Processes
To get to know something, we observe, edge closer, our senses on full alert. We drink in landscape through sensation: looking, listening, smelling…
The Grey City
The Grey City is a record of the places and people who aren’t present in the glossy and idealised promotional publications of…
Territories
The Scottish Borders could be described as a series of micronations. Even if you ignore the amalgamations since 1975 these are overlapping territories that…
My Garden
I am thinking about gardens at the moment: gardening as a political act, a radical act, an ideological act. Guerrilla gardening, The Royal Botanical Gardens, allotments…
November 24, 2014
Suicide Machine
I had the idea for this project in 2009 whilst checking into Gatwick Airport, London for a flight. After looking at my passport the desk attendant said…
The Ruins
Deep inside Bourtreehill park there is a small clearing. In it sits what remains of Bourtreehill House, a mansion which has a history that stretches back to…
in-between
This project seeks to represent some of the everyday tensions and contrasts I see around me living in Britain. I often find myself between places, some of which are tangible and some not so obvious. I was raised in a small town, which lies…
Living Infinite
The sea is everything.
It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy.
It is an immense desert, where…
Sketchbook
So, welcome to my space on the Documenting Britain site – and first off I must say how delighted I am to be part of this group of inspiring individuals who are producing…
Parallax | Shift
Abandoned II
An exploration into the multiplicity of views that occur at the edge of places, in which the trace of place is transposed by movement in the act of entering the edge of the city…
Waiting in the wings of England
I’m so happy to be here as part of Documenting Britain, but this isn’t a very cheery post. I think that’s partly to do with the time of year, partly my time of life, but mostly the time we’re alive in. So many Big Things, some of them so huge they end up being invisible: elephant ghosts in our most…
Dereham
I live in the small market town of Dereham, Norfolk. Dereham labels itself ‘The heart of Norfolk’, due to it’s central location within Norfolk…
The Migrants
Grid Reference NH84324 51149
We paused that morning by a stand of alder and willow, where the Nairn buckles and curves, unravelling north-east towards the Firth.
Sunlight was scribbling October in the water. One by one the last birds let down, drawing their seams of thirst across a pool, then banking over the trees…
Bedminster
As a photographer, I have long been obsessed by looking. But that’s not unusual—we all are: in the age of social media, on demand TV and…
November 24, 2014
Reflections
Soon it’ll be eight weeks since my relocation to Aberdeen from London and this seems an appropriate time to start reflecting on this passage. A passage for it is taking place…
A Photographic Journey of a People and a Place
What is a place, a people?
Do the people make that place?
My work concentrates on people – the person in…
November
It is raining a little. The sky is patchy with light and grey clouds. On one side of the bus the mediterranean waves roar green and fierce-full toward the shore. On the other the naked…
The M8
The M8 is Scotland’s busiest motorway and one of the busiest in the UK, running between the cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh. Thousands of people commute…
An Introduction
A brief introduction; my name is Roseanne, and I am an Edinburgh-based poet from the Shetland Isles. I am currently reading for a PhD at the University of Stirling, in which I aim to…
Beginnings
Last February I undertook a rushed journey from the South of France to the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides. My uncle had died…
Warrington
Today I went to Warrington. It’s a town near to where I live and I am relatively familiar with it having visited it’s Multiplex cinema, IKEA and…
November 24, 2014
Winged Harp
For me the act of travel goes hand in hand with photography. Taking pictures is my excuse to explore and my reason for being in an unfamiliar place…