Investigations into Sense of Place

Investigations into Sense of Place – Photography and Film

Current research is informed by Sense of Place; diarising my relationship with new or personally significant spaces, through film, photography, sound, drawing and print.

Films

‘Blackbird’
A Short Film
26 Seconds
2024

Filmed in the evening of the Summer Solstice on a Samsung S21 Camera Phone
Best watched on full screen with headphones

In 2023, along with my partner, I took on an allotment. It had been a long-held dream; to have a patch of greenery, away from the noise and bustle of the urban environment, on which to rest, breathe fresher air, be with and learn from nature, and grow food.

I began blogging about the experience, sharing only with friends on social media. I didn’t intend for it to become an art project. However, a link began to emerge between photographing and filming the allotment for documentation and photographing filming it to capture its ‘Sense of Place’, and how I revered it and felt within its calmness. My current research is deeply informed by the concepts of Sense of Place and Psychogeography, documenting my relationship with new and personally significant spaces. Through soundscapes, film, photography, drawing, and print, I map the subtle, often unseen connections that bind us to a location or journey, exploring themes of Place Attachment, Wanderlust, Self-Transcendence and emotional resonance.

‘The Garden’
A Slow Film
2023 – 2024

Filmed on a Samsung S21 Camera Phone
Best watched on full screen with headphones

I describe this as a ‘Slow Film’. It was filmed over the course of one year, capturing moments as they happened; those subtle moments and happenings that ‘make a place’. I use the term ‘moving stills’, I wanted to make a film which consisted of a number of still shots, as if they were photographs, but that the photographs were moving, moving with life. Not human life (although you can hear humans) as human presence would creative a narrative, which I did not want. Using POV techniques, the film portrays what I see, hear and experience when in my garden; when I am just ‘being’. When no one else is there, apart from my cat, who very much enjoys taking part in the process and being knowingly featured as a cameo or taking centre stage.

‘The Art of Living Outdoors’
Photography with Soundscape
2021

This film is best experienced using headphones.

The art of experiencing and living ‘in’ the outdoors was the theme of a workshop, part of Artists in Residence @ C2C Social Action programme working with women who are in vulnerable situations.

The workshop celebrated the richness of late autumn and documented the experience through photography and sound recordings.

I led the women to run through piles of leaves and feel the crisp air. We whizzed around on a child’s roundabout in the park. We listened to the crackling sounds of a fire while we baked jacket potatoes and cooked a chilli con carne for lunch. We wrapped up dried twigs and branches tightly in tin foil and utilising the fire, baked them amongst the potatoes. This was to make our own charcoal to draw with, in a later workshop.

We left smelling of smoke and had leaves in our hair, but they were wonderful reminders of a splendid day full of laughter and conversation.

This short film, tells the story of that day and is a pre-curser to my later ‘Sense of Place’ research.