As I said in a previous Blog post. I was interested in documenting how nature was slowly taking back man-made objects and buildings, left in it's path.
I have grown up in the North East all of my life so I am pretty aware of where old work sites are. As a child, my Mother and Father took me to these amazing places where there would be old machinery discarded as surplus to requirement. These items to me would help build the settings for my adventure.
Because of the era I was born in my outlook has always been the same concerning these places.
When my family first moved up to the north it was to work the Iron Stone Mines. This was one of our largest industries around this area. My ancestors would see these landscapes as their places of work and would probably hate the sight of it everyday.
I find the juxtaposition of these two era’s amazing because so much has changed in as little as Five generations of my family tree.
I decided to concentrate on one site in particular. My reason for this was because the buildings are still partially intact, making it easier for me to put my point across through my images.
My focus was not so much the buildings being broken but more how it came to be in its current state.
You can clearly see from the above image, how the Tree over time has forced its self through the Roof of the building. Tearing the rest of the structure down with it. I wanted to adopt Don McCullin's approach to narrative and get into the depths of the story. Getting into the still standing buildings was my idea of showing this.
Getting up close and personal to the subject as McCullin does, helps you feel the pain and stress it is going through.
My final outcome for this project has satisfied the requirements of the brief because it clearly shows a story of what’s is happening around us.
To improve my current project I will frequently visit this same site and build upon what images I have already collected. this is something that could possibly go on for the rest of my career and there after. To complete this assignment firstly I needed to understand what I wanted my narrative to be about. the whole idea of ‘Reclaim’ is something I have been wanting to look at for some time now so this was a perfect opportunity to do it.
My main problem in this assignment were actually accessing the site because it is on private land. it took me a while to get in touch with the necessary parties but more than worth the battle
One thing I was criticised about on a group critique was my distance from the subjects. Although I took this on board and returned to take more pictures. I didn’t feel the close up images showed the extent of the destruction.
This assignment challenged me in more ways than one:
Firstly, The process of getting in touch with the land owners and persuading them into letting me gain access was a task in it’s self.
Secondly, I’ve never been tasked with fitting a narrative to a collection of photographs.
On reflection of the whole assignment, I’d very much like to take my influence from Martin Parr and take a lot more picture of the place, maybe to even make up lots of smaller narratives within the bigger picture.
