The August Break is nearly over–only 2 more days to go.
It’s been the most enjoyable group project I’ve been involved in on the web, and it’s been a wonderful learning curve for me. Now, as I start to wind down, I’m looking through all the unused photos sitting in my hard drive, and realizing that a lot of them are pretty good, and that I don’t want to neglect them completely. So I’ve spent a large chunk of today sorting through them, arranging them, and adding finishing touches in Photoshop (my most precious plaything now).
It’s interesting to look at the recurring themes I have collected this month. There’s a great amount of photos of Throop and rural Dorset–places where I feel at ‘home’, connected to the land, the peace and quiet of it all. And these are places that carry a strong sense of this myth of Englishness that I have been talking about more recently.
Fields that I have walked through over a period of 27 years, since I moved to Bournemouth as a kid, which really don’t seem to have changed that much at all. Thankfully.
And then, there is a surprising amount of photos collected from my two trips to London this month. Twice in one month is more than I’ve been in the last 6 or 7 months at all. But part of me feels at ‘home’ there too, and part of me deeply craves the connection with the city. This is the paradox I’ve been able to see more clearly in myself this month, and to consider what it means about choices I will make in future.
These urban and industrial images of the city also speak very strongly to me of Englishness. Especially London’s rooftops and railway lines.
So much time is spent on platforms like this, when I’m there. Balham, Clapham, Gipsy Hill, Streatham, and on to Victoria.
How many people actually know that the River Thames has a second name? The River Isis. Could that be why I feel drawn to it’s presence, and why part of me feels dull and deadened when I am away too long?
But I do miss fresh air, when I’m there. Thank God the old power stations, like this one at Battersea, no longer chug out their smoke all day long, or imagine how much scarcer the fresh air would be then. It’s a wonder the city survived all that, the dark days of smog and disease. Perhaps it is just my love of Dickens and his stories about the city that has made me romaticize it so. Oh I wish I could remember the names of the short stories and the authors that we studied at University, who wrote about London life through the ages of the twentieth century. But I can’t.
And so, as September, and Autumn, approaches, I shall be churning out some of the rejected and neglected photos that I have decided are still worthy of attention and processing yet. Autumn is bringing it’s wind of change into my neighbourhood, and new things will be happening in my family life, like school for Rubin, and back to college for me. We will have to see where these shifting breezes take us next.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
I have loved looking at your photos of this month of August as part of the August Break. It’s sad that its all coming to an end (though I am not sure I could have kept up the momentum for much longer and I am now a day behind).
Chrissy, thanks – I’ve enjoyed it too. Let’s keep in touch on Flickr. But for my part, I too am flagging now and could not keep up this pace of production for much longer. Perhaps I’ll have a real break in September.
I am interested in your discussion of Englishness. It’s a really tricky identity because it is often difficult to differentiate it from Britishness and the English have no significant ‘other’ to define themselves in opposition to. I suppose it is personal. I look forward to reading more!
Have you heard the Steve Knightley/Show of Hands song Roots? The lyrics are here http://www.allthelyrics.com/lyrics/show_of_hands/roots-lyrics-1259096.html.
Hi Jenny, thanks for your comment, and yes – I love that song, Roots, by Show of Hands. I was just playing it recently whilst sitting at the computer, and my partner asked what it was. They’re a band from Weymouth, I think, aren’t they? So fairly local to us. But I’ve never seen them play. Have you? It’s really an interesting song. I love English folk music anyway, and feel it’s sad that so much of our traditions are being lost. Have you heard any of The Imagined Village’s stuff? On the first album, there’s a great song by Billy Bragg, also on this topic of losing our ‘Englishness’.
I think it’s a difficult subject, because for so long we carried the shame of our Imperialism (well, some of us). And it’s so very English to be quite self-deprecating anyway, that it was only OK to support England when the football was on (oh, that’s something that I really do not like very much – the fervour of English football fanaticism). But our folk and cultural tradition stands aside of all that to me, and is something that we should feel able to treasure.
‘Roots’ by Show of Hands
Oh, just checked up on that, and the song is called “Hard Times of Old England”, and is actually by Steeleye Span originally, not Billy Bragg. But Imagined Village do a pretty good version of it.
I’ll look out for it, never heard of Imagined Village. I’ve seen Steve Knightley on his own live quite a few times and he writes all the songs anyway (singer and guitar, the other bloke’s called Phil Beer). He is a great performer, always gets people singing. Just had a look and he’s playing at Swanage folk fest when I’m away in a couple of weeks.
I might give Swanage Folk Fest a go this year – I was away last year when it was on. I thought that some of the scenes in the video for Roots looked like they’d been shot in one of the tents at Dorset Steam Fair. Makes me wish I was going to that next weekend too.
i love your photography. those tops photos are especially beautiful.
Thanks, Mon.