Conversations

Conversations in two of this week's locations - Appleby Magna and Stretton en le Field - encapsulate two of the important themes that lie behind the project. In Appleby I meet a man walking his dog (in many of the villages to date, the 'man walking the dog' is the only person I encounter other than workers of some kind, the postman, the builder). Unbidded he begins an exposition on the local history, not least on the local dignitary, Sir John Moore, with whom he has a beef over his involvement in slavery through the East India Company. Grudges, it seems, are carried a long time in rural Leicestershire! But his radical political views (scrap the Lords etc.) and keen sense of history chimes with my own feelings that each location and every image ought to be neither a view, nor even a representation of, each place I visit. Rather it is the sense of history and events, both in the past and present, of details observed and recorded, that make up the shapes, colours and handling of each picture when I return to the computer to upload and manipulate the images made, and then eventually translate these in the studio to paint.

In Stretton I chance upon a single soul, a younger man leaving his parent's property. Initially I think he is drawn to have a conversation as the village is so tiny, a collection of quite grand houses strung out along a single cul de sac, that strangers are a rare occurrence. But it turns out he is a professional photographer, specialising in advertising work making pictures primarily of cars. We have a long discussion on the changing nature of photography, on the ubiquity of the medium, on the ways in which the advent of digital compacts have demystified production of the significant image. It occurs to me after we go our separate ways that my slavish adherence to the quality DSLR and the lenses that I lug around with me may be wholly unnecessary to my purposes - at least in part if not in whole. After all my purposes are fleeting engagements with particular details and moments not a purely topographical record. Quite how this will effect the latter stages of my project I'm not yet sure. But as retrace my steps through Stretton I find myself reaching for the iphone in my pocket and shoot some images with the various picture apps I have on it...