Output details

Beneath the Surface / Hidden Place

How can photography be used to explore physical and emotional effects of economic change or regeneration? What is revealed through collaboration with individuals and communities whose surroundings have undergone upheaval - caused by a decline in heavy industry, or housing regeneration? This project developed a transferable methodology, working directly with collaborators their photographs, and specific sites where their original photographs were taken. I re-photographed the site as it stands today. The importance of an insider’s memory, knowledge & experience, when looking at a location where all previous reference points have gone, was paramount. Other methods included archival research into Ordnance survey maps, press and industrial photography, aspects of social, architectural and oral histories. The work traverses photography, socially engaged art practice, social and architectural histories. The project identified collaborators through Industrial Archaeology, Scottish Government Regeneration and Planning contacts, Social Housing Directors, and key local individuals attached to trusts or heritage museums. The project’s context is academic with its impact extending to local and governmental interests. The project’s launch show at Stills (2008, audience figures of 3,793) was then followed by a touring exhibition (2009-2010). The contribution was further disseminated through conferences, allowing presentations on ethical questions raised by artistic use of stories told informally during the art process, as well as on the politics of regeneration in the context of Scotland's nationwide demolition of Tower blocks. See physical evidence in the repository for: Framing Time and Place: Repeats & Returns in Photography, University of Plymouth (2009); Transmission, Transmission: Hospitality, Sheffield Hallam (2010); Whither the Roots, Stills, Edinburgh (2011); Between Nature and Culture: Photography as Mediation and Method, The Photographer’s Gallery, London (2012); Home/Land: Women, Citzenship, Photographies, Loughborough University (July 2012, forthcoming publication with Liverpool University Press); and Remembering, Forgetting, Imagining: The Practices of Memory, Fordham University, New York (March 2013).