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 Relics of an outdated rural economy.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.
public and private
Dublin. Buswell’s. I have been waiting for it to happen. I take photos of the textures of everyday life. Everyday life is under challenge. Ireland is on the brink of ruin. “We are back to the old three ‘Ps’ Michael”, someone says to me – “Pints, Ponies … and I can’t remember the third” … [...]
site and artifact – media materialities
Sam (Schillace) has put me onto a very interesting photo project – where site becomes the surface of artifact. PhotoGraphy from ShiKai Tseng on Vimeo. (An artifact is placed inside a pinhole camera that records a 360 degree panorama onto its surface.) Further focus on medium as mode of engagement, as much as signal and [...]
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 [...]
the picturesque – again
Up from Peel Bothy, Hadrian’s Wall, central section. These photogenic experiences are starting to bother me …
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.
Jedburgh – after Beny
Exploring the Borders with Gary (Devore). Jedburgh Abbey – an extraordinary building. In the footsteps of Roloph Beny – remarkable photographer, remarkable and misguided snob. Here is his photo from the lavish Thames and Hudson edition of Rose Macualay’s “Pleasure of Ruins” (1962).
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). [...]
Rotterdam – Andor von Barsy
Came across the wonderful documentary photography of Andor von Barsy on a recent trip to Rotterdam. So reminiscent of my childhood in a shipbuilding port in the north east of England. My history and childhood seems to be black and white and written now in silver crystals.
archaeography – developments
A session at the Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG) (United States) conference 2011- Dialogs in Archaeological Photography. Flickr galleries – [Link] [Link] Here are some notes accompanying the fascinating and sometimes wonderful pictures. Nostalgic, Personal, Neglected, Treasured, Rejected: The Other Photography in Archaeology Colleen Morgan, University of California, Berkeley, clmorgan@berkeley.edu Our record of archaeological uncertainty is [...]
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.
d.ethnography
In Tokyo for EPIC – Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference. 6th edition. [Link] Wonderful comment this morning from Victoria Bellotti (PARC) – that archaeology is dethnography Absolutely – (d)ethnography – d.ethnography – the intermingling of dreams and mortality, utopia and the realities of material constraints, the angel of death whispering in the ear of aspiration. [...]
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 [...]
Dere Street | Chew Green
In the North East of England for the Binchester excavations – Vinovium.org. Dere Street, the Roman road that passes through Binchester, here runs north across what is now the English-Scottish border. There was a medieval village – Kemblepath – up here in the wilds of Upper Coquetdale. On the site of Chew Green, the Roman [...]
Ghost signs: BBC Viewfinder
The BBC is covering Tom Bland’s photography in the archaeological imagination – Ghost signs. “I was seeing layers of typography, paint, colour – and combined with the texture of the crumbling and flaking materials, many of them were appealing to me as contemporary pieces of design in the vein of work by Ray Gun magazine.” [...]
Walltown Crags
Checking out Hadrian’s Wall for our summer tour. Chorography – checking out the car parks!
Holmes 2009 – documenting the past?
It can’t really be called “period detail”. What impressed us about the new Sherlock Holmes movie [Link] was the way it handled the nineteenth century. It was the color space (very mannered, desaturated, toned) and the abraded, worn, littered look of the urban spaces. It just kind of felt like Victorian London. Of course, Victorian [...]
ghosts in the mirror 1
Spent a family Thanksgiving up in Boonville, Anderson Valley with Sam and Angela Schillace. As ever, the locality is, for me, one of few fragile traces of somewhat indeterminate and agricultural pasts, juxtaposed with major investment in business futures. An old (cultivated) apple tree in the nearby field, railway carriages in the town converted to [...]
Rotterdam
Westmalle Tripel – the classic. Attending the International Advisory Board for the Mayor of Rotterdam – Link