Sacrificial Coast

I guess I originally thought that I would go back to Kaliningrad for my Borders story, being and enclave and cut off from the rest of Russia, border issues are a constant issue there. But I feel that I need a story I can revisit regularly and therefore it needs to be in Britain for the moment.


Land and people's relationship to the land interests me and is a theme that I keep returning to.
I came a cross an recently published book Vanishing landscapes which deals with the fact that landscapes will soon no longer exist the way we know them. John Bergers writing appears and work by photographers such as Edward Burtynsky , Joel Sternfield, and Robert Adams are featured.Photographer An - My Le has written some very thought provoking words in this book:

'While landmasses are carved up into jigsaw puzzles of nations, territories, and green zones, oceans define borders but defy politics. Against the backdrop of an ocean, any enterprise, military, commercial or scientific, appears fragile and barley tolerated.'

I really like this: 'oceans define borders but defy politics' This makes me think about Britain's eroding coastline. Certain parts of the coast especially in Norfolk is eroding faster than ever before. There are communities such as Happisburgh, Walcott, Mundesley that in the not so distant future might be completely swallowed up by the sea and wiped of the map. The U.K government says it is to costly to protect the whole of the coastline. 'Managed retreat' is the term scientists has given this approach, meaning that governments around the world are making decisions about what it can afford to save and what has to be sacrificed. A big part of the Norfolk coast seem to be out of luck, the sea defences are considered unsustainable and new ones will not be built. This mean that many people stand to loose their homes to the sea, farmers will loose their livelihood, historic sites and nature reserves will disappear. Unlike in countries like The Netherlands where compensation is given for loss of land to erosion, in the U.K there is no compensation. The effect the sea has on the land has become a political issue. How to decide what is protected and what is to be sacrificed? And there is talk of what could be Britain's first climate change refugees.
I want to visit these areas, photograph the landscapes and the people who belong to these places, not just Norfolk, though I think this might be a very good starting point but also other areas. At this stage I am quite open minded about what will be included. I could just focus on what I want to call 'Sacrificial Coast' or it could be extended to look at what is done to preserve and defend ourselves from the sea.

I would like to use statistics with these images and get quotes from people. My hope is that I can make some good connection with people living in these areas. In terms of making it in to a multimedia presentation I could perhaps use voice over from people talking about the situation or perhaps record the sound of the sea hitting the cliffs and use it as 'background music'. But right know I really need to delve deeper in to the research and check some places out.

Some very useful articles:

Waves of destruction The Guardian April 17 2008

Living on the edge The Guardian October 9 2006

As the climate changes, bits of England's coast crumble International Herald Tribune May 4 2007

Should we abandon Britain's crumbling coast? The Guardian August 18 2008

Living on the edge: The owners whose homes are going over a cliff Daily Mail 12 July 2008

Players at England's oldest golf course told to let it crumble into the sea The Guardian May 20 2008

Erosion plea from sea victims BBC News player

Wale's coastal erosion threat BBC News player

CCAG Coastal Concern Action Group

Perpignan thoughts

Perpignan was such an intense experience, it was so nice to meet so many of the class all in one place. Saw and talked so much photography, been feeling exhausted, so many thoughts spinning in my head...

Some of those thoughts...

I have mixed feelings about the exhibitions and slide shows that were shown. There were predominantly stories from Africa and Asia, shot by western photographers, very few stories from Europe and U.S. I have to admit that I found a lot of the work shown uninspiring. Many of the stories felt the same, shot in different countries but often seemed to take the same approach. I can't help feeling that many photographers see conflicts and suffering as an opportunity to make their name and it is something quite bizarre sitting in a pretty little town in France watching war, misery and disease on a big screen. I felt quite uneasy about the whole thing at times, wondering what the hell I was doing and was grasping for some sort of context.

Having said all that, there were off course exceptions, such as a really amazing set of portraits of Belgian fishermen shot by Stephan Vanfleteren, documenting a dying breed, there were so much character in their faces, truly anthropological. Exhibitions I liked were Paolo Pellegrin's images of the Iraqi diaspora, focusing on Iraqi refuges in Syria and Jordan. Pellegrin has that amazing ability to capture very big issues of our time without forcing a specific viewpoint on the viewer. The Return of the Concubine story by Axelle de Russe really reached me, these women's situation is disturbing and very upsetting. Brent Stirton's image of the evacuation of a dead mountain gorilla in Virunga park creates a reaction in me every time, so it was fascinating to see the full story on display.

Looking at the World Press Photo exhibition that also were on show, I feel that a different state of photography are also represented with different styles, many stories are more portrait based, using medium format or even large format in some cases, often taking on a more anthropological or poetic/reflecting stance. This is inspirational, there is a feeling that the medium is evolving, acknowledging new ways of seeing. I would have like to see some solo exhibitions like this in Perpignan.
A really good thing in Perpignan was the bookshop at Couvent des Minimes. I got really blown away by the Ojodepez magazines I found. I have seen a few issues before of this magazine but never seem to be able to find them in the U.K. So,so, so inspired by the photography in them. Olivia Arthur’s Behind the veil story heads the latest issue which really fascinates me. Brilliant stories in here are Matias Costa’s Cargo about how an abandoned fishing fleet crew from the former Soviet Union is stuck in Gran Canaria – amazing story and the light is so bleak, like nothing I have seen before. And Johann Rousselot’s suicide crop story of cotton farmers in India taking their on lives is just so strong and really brings attention to the disastrous effects big western corporations have on local farmers.

So Perpignan defiantly got me feeling opinionated about the state of photojournalism. Coming back home, one of the first things a picked up to read was an article in PDN titled: 'The State of Art report: Photojournalism Survival' (I can't seem to find it online)it acknowledges the changing face of the media it also drew heavily on an article that Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin wrote in foto8 earlier this year: Unconcerned but not Indifferent. Reading this again made me feel a lot better about what I think.

Note to Self

I feel that this course is making me more focused in my practice. I feel more comfortable with my style of photography and have a more positive outlook of what I potentially can do with it and where it might fit. My approach to photography has pretty much always been related to exploring places, searching for locations that seem to tell a story. I took this same approach to my work this term but I also did portraits of people that I meet along the way. This was a first for me and to my surprise it felt very natural and I think the portraits worked quite well with the landscapes. I’m a bit worried though, that there is not enough stories to my work or that it lacks clarity. I research and read a lot but perhaps the images I take are to general? My ambition is not to create classic photo essays but more trying to give a sense or understanding of a place. At times I feel torn between aesthetics and content….
I want to continue to photograph in the same way for the borders project. I would also like to include text in future work, perhaps quotes or statistics to go with the images. I did experiment with that this term but feel that I have some way to go.

For me, being on this course has been very stimulating and really good for developing my thinking and understanding of the direction I want to take with my photography.
My experiences in Wimba World has been mainly positive. I find it hard though to be communicative and miss the form of the traditional classroom interaction. I think talking in small groups will help me a lot. But at the same time I really enjoy studying with everyone on the course and the fact that we live in so many different places adds a great sense of diversity and experience. The blogs are brilliant, it is great to read what everyone is doing, quite addictive, and I must start to write more on mine….

It was really good to do the ‘person at work’ etc. assignments, this has really made me a lot more aware of composition and the way I frame things. Saying that, I still keep ending up with some unforgivably crap images of things sticking out of peoples heads etc. I have also enjoyed the photographer lectures. It was new to me to look at some of these photographers’s practice in relation to other photographers work produced in the same era. And I can never have enough of photographer’s such as Evans, Frank, Eggleston and Sternfeld.
The photographer talks have been really interesting and I hope that we will get a lot more of them. Zijo Gafic’s work inspired me the most.

I need to learn more technical skills, my photoshop skills could be a lot better, trying to read things but learning curve is slow. It is also all the multimedia stuff, I feel a bit behind, some kind of workshop would be good…


Though I do enjoy shooting with an SLR I really feel the happiest with medium format, I’m drawn to the more ‘formal look’ and it feels the most suited for the type of images I like to take. And…I never thought I say this but I’m thinking of picking up the 5x4. I’m so in love with the formal and technical quality of the images it produces, but at the same time, this way of photographing will be completely new to me and the whole slowness and heaviness of the camera puts me off. I might just be too impatient to handle it, but I really want to have a go.

All done!

Just finished, it feels really good, I think. I always find it really hard to hand in work, I want to do more. I have spent the last week changing and cutting my essay. I hope I didn't cut to much. Robert Frank's images keeps appearing in my dreams. I got a ferry to catch in a few hours, no point going to sleep... So looking forward to holiday, driving to Sweden this year so I can stop and see friends on the way.

I want to continue with the Thames Estuary project when I get back but also start to think about borders project.

New exhibition on the Thames Estuary

Just came across this on the Guardian website - an exhibition called Soundings from the Estuary about the Thames Estuary off course. From what I can see off the pics on the site it focuses on the landscape. Guardian wrote:
'Artists have set out to capture the archaic sights and sounds of the Thames Estuary before its transformation from marshland to new town as the Thames Gateway Development. Soundings from the Estuary is an ongoing project inspired by the estuary's industrial, architectural, and maritime traces as well as the threat from construction and rising sea levels. Frank Watson’s photographs’s will feature with artists Germander Speedwell and Dave Lawrence at the Contemporary Urban Centre in south London, from June 20-July 20 2008.' The radar tower at Tilbury and the Tilbury power station which I have photographed as well is among the images featured on the website. There will be a talk at Tate Modern about the exhibition on 11th of July but I will be in Sweden then - really frustrating. I have to go and see this exhibition now, I am just so curious and in all honesty a bit gutted. It's hard not to get upset when you realise someone has already done a piece of work on the same topic as you. It is different though but nevertheless...
Good news though is my camera is not broken, took the role I had in the camera in for processing and it came out fine. My local lab said it sounded like the chemistry had been off on my mystery roles, anyway best thing is I can carry on shooting.
Trying to focus and write intro to my project, I find it difficult to get the tone right, what fits with images... Also struggling with a title. Some thoughts: estuary tide, out of tide, tidal time, tide & time, esturial........

My negs are ruined!!!!!

I went in to college today to process my film and have spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out what has gone wrong with my negs. They look really dense and of a very different colour to what they usually are, it made me look on the film type as they looked almost B&W. Concerned but didn't ask the technicians. Came home put the negs in the scanner and this is what I get:


Thought first that I must have overexposed really badly but i know for a fact that I had underexposed a few negs by mistake on one roll. I really don't get the disappearing heads etc. because I can see their heads on the negs!!! Really spooky and they are life guards as well!

I feel really really awful as most of the images were portraits and I had promised copies to people. That's the worst, it makes me look so unprofessional, especially towards my contact John in Southend that put me in touch with most of the people that were on those negs. God I feel bad.

Scanned other negs, they are good, so nothing wrong with scanner. It can't be the camera can it? Light leakage would have showed clearly. I can only think it was something wrong with the developer or fix. I want to scream and shout anything to get my negs back but they will off course forever be lost. And I had that thought to hand them into the lab, I wish I had but wanted to save money... Are taking a roll down the lab tomorrow, got half finished roll in camera have to know it's not the film or my camera.
This means that I have nothing to show for my tutorial tomorrow and have more work left to do than I thought. But as always I guess it could have been worse...

More finds along the estuary

I have not got as much photographed the past few weeks as I would have liked much due to the weather. It has been a real washout on the days I am able to go places. Spent pretty much the whole of last Thursday in cafes on Sheppey waiting for the rain to stop, reading in the local paper how the island got more rain in two days than is normal for two months! And Monday was so bad I got really depressed. I love overcast skies but problem is no one is around when it is so wet.

I made a journey to Shoeburyness at the weekend and found an abandoned garrison where kids were playing. I would have loved this as a kid, absolute dream. The kids told me it was haunted by ghosts and this was all part of their excitement. This garrison will very soon disappear and make way to housing development on this former MOD land. I did not really get the picture I wanted so will go back and try again.

I was fascinated by the low visibility, normally one can see the other side very well but when it is foggy it is like starring out at sea unaware of the other sides existence. I tried to make some clean images illustrating this, which I am quite happy with except that I need to scan them better. (My scanner scans some things better than others).

On the beach in Shoebury there was was an African church holding mass. Really different, I spoke to them but they did not want me to take pictures however I had already taken a couple of quick snaps.

I have started to record what people are telling me rather than taking notes which is working far better, I think, but I have yet to put this next to the pictures. I have got small prints made of the images so I can show people I meet while photographing what I'm doing but also to try to see if the images work together and what is missing. I'm really quite worried about edit it all together, I like the process but I also feel insecure.

I will hopefully get to photograph the life boat crew in Southend on Saturday. They are based at the end of the longest pier in the world. I like the idea of this crumbling pier.

It is 6th June today - Sweden's Nation Day, I wish I was in Sweden.