The right to defend your home

The court case of Peter Boggis, 77 fighting Natural England over if he should be allowed to continue building his sea defences to protect his home from falling in to the sea, in Easton Bavents, Suffolk got quite a lot of coverage in the national papers on 6th December.

Articles:

The Independent: 'Tide turns in favour of DIY sea barrier'

The Guardian: 'Coastal campaigner wins legal battle to save clifftop property'

The Times 'The Clifftop crusader wins his fight to repel the sea - by a technical knockout'

Natural England(a government body) argued that they want to make this stretch of coastline a 'Site of Specific Scientific Interest' (SSSI) and it should be allowed to erode naturally to reveal fossils etc. Boggis wants the right to protect his home, he has already put down 250,000 tonnes of clay in front of his house. This court battle also highlights the issue that 'if you don't allow someone to defend their own property then you must compensate them.' (The Times) This is something that is not happening in the U.K at the moment.

Birling Gap

Birling Gap, Sussex - A National Trust site

Research

It is not exactly on the theme of borders but I am looking at different stories at the moment that are somehow relating to what I am trying to do in order to find a working 'template' for my project. Some images that I have kept returning to over the past year is Gideon Mendel's photographs of last summers floods that affected many parts of the U.K. The images are interestingly juxtaposed with his images of floods in India that happened around the same time. They feel quite bizarre and yet so real. The work was published in the Guardian's G2 supplement last year and author Maggie Gee wrote a really intelligent and thought provoking article titled Drowned Worlds to accompany the images.

Missed exhibition

I found this postcard advertising an exhibition titled Borderspaces when visiting an exhibition at Photofusion. It ended Sunday so I missed it unfortunately. Did anybody else see it? Looking at the website it is nice to see that the theme has been interpreted in many different ways. Really gutted I didn't see it though, so many good photographers and it would have been interesting to see how it was put together in relation to what we are doing. Instead I just got myself wet and soggy down the coast with no good photographs!
However I did see Uta Kogelsberger's Bunker series which are fantastic to look at.

Contemplating sea defence

Some rough scans for today's tutorial

National Trust report

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