Boonville, California
I have been photographing these old apple trees for over ten years now. Relics of an outdated rural economy. Location – Mountain View Road, Boonville, Anderson Valley, northern California. The valley is now increasingly dominated by vineyards.
the Classical and the Romantic
Belsay, Northumberland. Early nineteenth century. Visiting with Bianca (Carpeneti). As pure a contrast between the Classical and Gothic Romantic as can be imagined. Here is something I have written to appear in my forthcoming book “The Archaeological Imagination” – to my embarrassment and frustration still in (final) revision. Sir Charles Monck decided not to restore [...]
landscape aesthetics – tactics (continued)
From a conversation in the Dun Cow, Durham (with Bianca Carpeneti and Chris Witmore). Topic – archaeology, ruins and the picturesque landscape. The allure, the ideology, the challenge to avoid cliché. How do we deal with archaeological landscapes today? Should I just give up photography? As a tainted medium? This is too simple a response [...]
landscape aesthetics – the politics (continued)
A conversation in the Dun Cow, Durham. To continue with the concern that I shared yesterday – the ideology of land, property and labor transformed into aesthetic form – landscape. Images that disguise history? (guilty pleasures of the sublime picturesque) [Link] It is not difficult to identify various components of this aesthetic. (I recall dealing with [...]
landscape aesthetics and the ideology of pleasure
The Dun Cow, Durham. Early evening. In conversation with Bianca (Carpeneti). My early morning runs are troubling me deeply … these encounters with a sublime picturesque [Link] [Link] [Link] Photo – dawn on Holy Island. Watercolor – J.M.W. Turner (exhibited 1829) (the castle in the background) Turner’s figures in the landscape (they are on the [...]
Steel Rigg – dawn
Field season 2011. Staying by Hadrian’s Wall – Peel Bothy, Once Brewed (built/restored by John Clayton in the nineteenth century as part of his reconstruction of the Wall). Two more early morning runs – refusing to succumb to jet lag.
Hadrian’s Wall – Peel Bothy
(Use the controls to navigate through the panorama) Peel Bothy is a renovated workers’ cottage right by one of the turrets in this infamous central section of Hadrian’s Wall. This week I have been staying there. Another morning run.
the aesthetic of the past
Out running – jet lag gets me up rather early – here at about 5.30 am local time. Lindisfarne, Northumberland – sixteenth century military architecture and a nineteenth century industrial facility turned into a wealthy man’s holiday home (Edward Hudson, proprietor of magazine “Country Life” commissioned Edwin Lutyens to oversee the conversion – very tasteful). [...]
petrified forest
The Petrified Forest is playing at the wonderful Stanford Theatre (1925 restored cinema showing Hollywood movies). In todays Guardian – an evocative “Country Diary” set in Borth, near Aberystwyth, west Wales, where we used to live. Another petrified forest on the coast and taking us back to the days of the Welsh epic sagas. Photo [...]
CILVRNVM
Fog at Heathrow has kept me in the NE. Here I am up the Tyne Valley – where the Roman bridge crossed the river, carrying Hadrian’s Wall.
Montana
Jeff Dexter. Rocking C’s Ranch, Montana. Cattle country. Looking for Cooler Cave: full of bison bones. Petroglyph. Dry Range, Rocking C’s. My first visit to this vast landscape of the American sublime. Faint and evocative traces of the Native American past everywhere.
Hadrian’s Wall | Stanegate | Vindolanda
(Use the controls to navigate through the panorama.) In the North East of England for the Binchester excavations – Vinovium.org. Just to the north of our site. Looking southwest, the Stanegate (Roman, named “stone road” in early medieval times) runs from the left of the picture, through the fort of Vindolanda and then straight up [...]
Coquetdale
In the North East of England for the Binchester excavations – Vinovium.org. Coquetdale – a remarkable valley to the north of Hadrian’s Wall. A fascinating archaeological landscape. Lordenshaws – prehistoric rock carvings and hill fort. Shillmoor – from when the borders settled down in the eighteenth century. Harbottle – feudal border stronghold, motte and bailey; [...]
Big Sur CA
One of those staged viewpoints. We are little different from the days of the Claude Glass – a tinted convex mirror through which the tourist or artist of the picturesque and sublime could see a composed and painterly image. Now we have the wide angle lens, saturated color (after Fuji Velvia), and the LCD of [...]
Anderson Valley
Boonville, Dan’s radio station. Fuji Fortia (super saturated color transparency for the tastes of the Japanese market), old stock. Casado pinhole camera.
Howick – The Bathing House
In the tracks of northern antiquaries, summer 2007 Part of the estate of the second Earl Grey (1832 Reform Bill) on the Northumberland coast, UK.
Flodden Field
In the tracks of northern antiquaries, summer 2007 September 9 1513: in the low rolling hills of north Northumberland an invading Scottish army was defeated in the bloodiest ever encounter between England and Scotland. James IV, King of the Scots, nine of his Earls, fourteen Lords of Parliament, five Highland Chiefs and 10,000 men at [...]