National Trust report

Changing shorelines, a report published by the National Trust, Britain's largest coastal landowner.
Changing Shorelines pamphlet

13m from the edge

Bryony

Diane

I have spent some days exploring parts of Norfolk coast that is badly affected by erosion. I stayed in Happisburgh, a small village which has lost most of its sea defences. Diane Wright bought Cliff house on Beach Road in Happisburgh over 20 years ago to run a B&B which she still does but the house is now only 13m away from the cliff edge. From the room I was staying in I could hear the sound of the waves, the windows were rattling in the wind and the rain pouring down outside. Diane has 3 m left to go until she will be forced to move out and the house will be demolished. She has grown used to the idea over the past few years but still feel it is unfair that the government is prepared to protect certain areas but not others. Diane said she bought the house in the belief that she would be protected.

Bryony next door, just moved in to her bungalow in July. 'I bought it in an act of defiance, I don't believe the sea should have the last word' she told me.

My trip was an attempt to try to start the project and get my head around the issues I want to focus on. Unfortunately I managed to take a lot of not very good pictures of subject matters that could have been very interesting. I feel really gutted over how crap my composition is at times, so unhappy with my horizons....I get in to a real state about things like this and end up chucking my negs in a draw, pretending they never happened, until I feel strong enough to face them and attempt to make better photographs. So feeling really quite unsure of the whole project, I haven't got a totally clear idea of how the project will look or how to precede and what is realistic to expect. At times I think perhaps I should focus on another idea I have about residual spaces, this would give me more freedom in terms of what I could include in the photographs. But I feel really quite strongly about the effect of these coastal landscapes and the people who inhabit them.

The project will definitely be a challenge for me, it is a more specific story from what I am used to photographing and is proving quite tricky in terms of how to physically shoot certain things. It is problematic photographing people and their houses on the edge. How to portray it? Only way of getting the houses and the people in would be to stand below the cliff shooting up, but one has to move far out in order to see the bungalows and the people would be tiny...
The broken sea defences look quite dramatic to me and I keep thinking they would look good shot on panoramic format, but I definitely don't want to shoot the whole project that way, mixing formats?... Anyway I put the above pictures up here to give you an idea of what I'm interested in conveying.

Norfolk

I'm heading up to Norfolk for a few days to have a look around areas affected by coastal erosion. I'm staying in Happisburgh, in a house that is very near the cliff edge which should make for an interesting experience. It looks like the weather should be grey with drizzly rain which suits my needs. I'm after some really bleak landscapes. I spend a lot of time on Google Earth looking at the coast line, so I have an idea about what to expect but it stands to see if the landscapes will be as dramatic as I imagine.

Vision

I can't believe what a fantastic line up Vision has this year. Actually it is so many good speakers that it will be impossible to see them all because some talks are on at the same time. What a dilemma!! Just found out that Stuart Franklin will show his work from the book Footprint. I have just recently become familiar with this work through my research for the borders project. His work is about the environmental changes that Europe is facing. Looks really interesting but it seems that this talk will be on at the at the same time as Simon Robert's though, I can only hope that the schedule will change for the better. Simon Roberts and Simon Norfolk is a must, their work is truly inspirational. Jacob Aue Sobol and Sam Faulkner should be really good to see too. I'm so looking forward to this!

Border stories

Here are some photo stories that I really like that are about borders:

East of a new Eden Yann Mingard and Alban Kakulya

http://albankakulya.com/docs/east_of_a_new_eden.pdf

People of Derry - Philippe Grollier

Abkhazia (Imagined States) - Eric Baudelaire

Trading over the Borderline - Guy Martin

The Middle Distance - Olivia Arthur

A lot of Paul Seawright's work deals with borders and the periphery.

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.