having lived on the margins of a city for 15 years i often found myself wandering in that space that is neither city nor countryside.
it has never been a space i particularly enjoyed inhabiting. being not one thing or the other, it tends to contain the clash of the two. like some ancient chimera, it is unruly, unsettling, but often revealing. a frankensteinian beauty of human detritus, abandoned and consumed by nature.
many of the photographs that i have taken on these walks i have been collecting together in the detractions project.
while the images in this project are intended to show the human impact on what is ostensibly called the natural environment it is not unexpected to find contamination as one evolves in to the other, yet i have been surprised when looking back over then how many have been found miles from the road in what truly should be a pristine, uncontaminated space. human impact is everywhere.
it is the current zeitgeist to see this invasion as an indication of the damage we are doing to our crucial environs and to get disturbed at the spoiling of the “natural landscape”.
i do share the view that we are doing untold damage to the planet that keeps us alive but, in the uk at least, there are no natural landscapes. human activity has shaped all areas of this country. from the consumption of farming lands in to the industrial landscapes of the midlands and the central belt, to the ancient middens uncovered by the plough, we have fashioned the landscape we live in, and much of it is glorious. but let’s just not kid ourselves that we have any wilderness. the hills and mountains of the highlands are denuded of trees by the constant grazing of deer and the burning for grouse. cumbrian hills are much the same, kept grassy by the efforts of the sheep that keep us in lamb and mutton
i could go on, but you get the picture, and it’s not the reason i started composing this article anyway, i just got side tracked. apart from the blatant plug for you to look at the detractions project page, i wanted to share the wonderful glorious book i came across this week.
robin friend’s bastard countryside. this collection of (coincidentally) 15 years of wandering sums up pretty much (and much more eloquently) what i am trying to communicate with detractions. as the publicity blurb says, it embodys a friction between british pastoral ideals and present reality. not only is it a curation of thought-provoking images but it has an equally lucid essay by robert macfarlane (and if you haven’t read his books you really should). so, check it out and if you can, get a copy and support an artist.