1: The distance between us – Expressing Your Vision

Exercise 5.2

10/11/17

213-024-LC-jpg-10297-600x483 — Hawthorn Hive, beached section of mine ventilation duct; bricks among boulders. Afternoon 2/12/99. © Sirkka- Liisa Konttinen, courtesy Amberside

This image is from the series ‘The Coal Coast’ by Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen. It was originally shown at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in 2003, and published in book format as ‘The Coal Coast’. The image is taken on the east coast of England, in Durham, and shows a discarded section of mine duct on the beach, looking remarkably like an enormous snail shell. The rest of the beach is desolate and deserted. The Durham coast has had a long history of coal mining, and for many years the spoil heaps and the rubbish were simply dropped onto the beach, building the surface up several feet above its original level. The coal industry is now finished and the remnants on the beach are slowly being removed by both man and the sea. The broken mine duct stands as a metaphor for the destruction of the environment by man and the loss of a way of life. It is still visible, as it is both large and a good distance from the edge of the sea, however, over time, it too will vanish.

This image immediately reminded me of the similar history of mining along the Fife coast where I live. Much environmental destruction was wrought over the years, however the traces of that are now only visible to those who are aware of the history of the area and know what they are looking at. My image is made as a response partly to the internal context of the image – unexpected things seen on the beach, but mainly to the external context of the history of the area and the effect on the local population and job availability.

untitled-16 — Sanitary-ware remnants, Torryburn Beach at high tide.

This image shows remnants of the broken down mine washrooms, that were left on the beach. The tide is high and gradually working at smoothing and polishing them. Eventually they will also disappear, or simply become unrecognisable. They stand, at present, as a reminder of times past, work lost, and also the loss of many lives in the mines that ran under the sea here.

References:

Konttinen, S. (2003). The Coal Coast. Newcastle upon Tyne: AmberSide.

Coal Coast – Fife Version

06/11/17

While thinking about an image to use for Exercise 5.2 (homage) I went back over several of the exhibitions I had visited recently. When looking at the images, one by Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen from the Coal Coast series struck me and I remembered that there is some unusual debris on part of the coast in Fife near Torryburn. Oddly enough, there is the usual beach flotsam and jetsam but there is also a stretch of about 200 metres of coast that is strewn with old bricks and sanitary-ware (broken up large pieces of ceramic sinks). The local mythology – which I haven’t been able to confirm – is that it comes from the destroyed wash-houses of one of the local pits, and was put on the beach at that point to stop erosion. There is no logic to why the erosion should be particularly bad just there, and I suspect the truth is that it was just dumped, although that is odd in itself, as there is no road nearby and the shore is very gradually shelving for at least a hundred metres, so you couldn’t get a boat large enough to bring the rubble in close enough.

I felt that there was a possibility of doing my homage shot on the beach as there are several possible links with the image I was thinking of, so I went back over both the exhibition images as a whole and re-thought about it and the accompanying film which I have discussed in more detail in the blog post below.

https://wordpress.com/post/scottishzoe.blog/2478

Coal mining in Fife has a long tradition, with coal having been dug since the thirteenth century and the Fife coalfields were the largest in Scotland. Many ran under the Forth and were very deep. The nearest pit to this stretch of coast would have been the Valleyfield pit which closed in 1978. There is little surface evidence left of this extensive underground industry except the occasional pit-head and the endless bings (spoil heaps). The last deep coal mine at Longannet, which stretched well under the Firth of Forth was closed in 2002 after flooding. There continue to be ongoing attempts at open-cast mining, which scar the countryside and cause aggressive debate.

I have been to this beach on many occasions, and also to the pit-head further along the coast at the Seafield Colliery however have never taken any images of the debris, so I went back this weekend at high tide, and again at low tide to look at the area and the surrounding coast.

Setting the scene:

The chimney in the distance is part of Longannet power station, which is now disused. At low tide the mud flats stretch out for about a hundred metres, although I would not advise walking on them, as the tide can come in extremely fast, and much of it forms quicksand.

The surrounding flora (winter variants):

There is a wide variety of wildflowers and bushes along the edge of the coast here and they attract thousands of birds, many of which are protected species.

The bricks:

Part of the rubble is made up of bricks that come from the local brickworks and are stamped with the source name: Lochgelly, Bowhill, Hill of Beath, Lochside. More evidence of an industrial past now gone.

The evidence:

It remains a mystery as to how the sanitary-ware reached this spot – and why in such a localised and inaccessible (except by foot) point.

Exercise 5.1

30/10/17

Brief: Find a subject you have empathy with and take a sequence of shots to explore the distance between you. Evaluate by whats in the frame, not by your preconceived ideas.

I started by struggling to think of an idea for this but eventually came up with two:

books – and my relationship to them – I read constantly.
the coast – sea and the pebbles that I grew up with.

The weather was very dull today and also cold so I started by exploring the theme of books. Our house is full of them, all types and in all stages of preservation. I tried various image ideas and eventually enlisted the aid of my son – who is also a bibliophile – and as long as there are words on the page will read it!

My original images were of the bookshelves, a general bookshelf, some of my photobooks and a closer up image.However I felt these were quite ‘cold’ and didn’t say much about any relationship between me and my books.

I then just picked two books and started to play around with photographing these, both together and separately. I didn’t like the image on the right as it felt much too staged, but the left hand one is often how my books end up when I get distracted while reading, yes, I know it is bad for the spine!

I then thought to experiment with someone reading, so tried a further series of poses, both from close and further away. When I went away to check the focus of the initial images my son had acquired a ‘helper’, we changed the book, for the amusement factor (a little corny’) of taking a photograph of reading a book about reading a photograph.

The problem with this set of images is that the mental distance between me and the subject increased again – so I went back for a further think and with much jumping up and down to refocus worked on some images of myself and a book. The image on the left is ‘marred’ by an accident of the sun, which had momentarily come out and reflected in the lens. The light on the book was, however, making it really easy to see the pictures, win or lose – picture versus practicality. I then moved place in the room and looked at close-up images and more distant ones.

The image I felt was most evocative at the end of it all was this one. I liked the way the blur from the flicking pages echoed my hair, which was exaggerated by the black and white conversion. A completely accidental mirroring, but it catches my relationship with books.

10/11/17

Having carried out and posted this exercise I came across a fascinating article in Photoworks 22 by Sara Knelman, where she talks about her collection of photographs of woman reading, ranging from early black and white images to more modern colour ones. She relates this to the work of Virginia Woolf in a ‘A Room of Ones Own’, and also comments on the considered male feeling the reading was an appropriate pastime for a woman, even though they might not understand what they were reading. She ends by pointing out ‘Part of the beauty and intrigue of these images, then, comes not from the things we can gain from visual cues but from wondering at the imperceptible imaginings of the readers’. (Knelman, 2017) If my family come across this image in the future will they wonder about my thoughts?

Reference:

Knelman,S. (2017). Lady Readers. Photoworks, 22 pp.138-153