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Lost in a landscape
Various prints from the East, Lost in Landscape and Coasting series.
North City
Photographs of North Norwich taken from forever to 2023
Colour
Landscapes, prints from various series and some one-offs by request.
Vanishing Points
Western Front prints from 2012 to 2018, from the 2018 exhibition.
Great Yarmouth
Photos from various series between 2000 and 2021.
Coasting
Photography from along the coast of East Anglia
Posters
A selection of posters based on various buildings, objects and projects.
Limited Editions
Special edition numbered/signed Giclée prints – studio printed
Flatland
Small publishing co-operative, slowly growing our book list.
Lost in a Landscape
and other places…
A series of essays
An unstructured collection of written pieces which are basically a long form series of intermittent work – mostly observational, written to accompany photographs shot over the last ten to fifteen years across Norfolk and East Anglia. These essays look both at what is seen as well as what isn’t; acknowledging the depth of the landscapes we briefly inhabit, and the lives lived that are disguised by geographical, environmental and human change.
The history of us is in our soil, mixed with the crag and flint, hidden in our place-names, and lines our fields and boundaries. The past is there, in the lines our rivers, roads, streets and buildings. The narrative we exist as part of is as deep as it is long.
Lost in a Landscape: Buckenham Carrs
Heading west of the city two days before Christmas, and it's all a bit of a bind. A glue of cars sticks the inner ring-road fast, the whole route backed up with shoppers, escapees, people leaving work early, the driving dead. The light is at a tangent – the winter...
Lost in a landscape: Little Snoring
When you drive you travel along the edges of things, where modern life has built a wall along the edge of the land, the tall banks, berms and tree lines of the A roads and motorways where the litter and pieces of spent tyre lie in the dust. The piles of scrapings...
The forgotten chapel – William of Norwich
Ring-roads, go round and past. Nature of the beast I suppose, circling. Norwich is blessed with ever-increasing circles; from the old castle ditches and the fee to the city wall and the inner link roads, out to the proper ring-road now forming into another ripple of...
The Walled City 4: St Augustines Gate
This used to be the back wall of Magpie Print. I remember it being an inside; the inside of a building full of printing gear with 'Mudpie Bob' as we called him at the helm steering it. The trade seas were rough, from letterpress through to photolitho. I used to help...
Lost in a landscape: The Denes
Summer is nearly upon us, it's May, a bank holiday weekend. What better time for a lazy trip to Great Yarmouth for a mindless wander along the prom and up to the strange outland of the Denes, even hazy sun is nice, in this swearing breathing Martin Parr exhibition....
Collapsing new buildings: Barrack Road Gasometer
Another thing to collect, often more by chance than design. These are unmistakable monuments in our urban landscapes and I happened to pass this yesterday in Great Yarmouth and happened to stop and get my camera out and take a few snaps of it after it skylined in...
Lost in a landscape: Hardingham – four crosses
There are axis of travel in our existence, roads that we use often at various times that become embedded into us a part of our journey through life. Well worn paths that aren't exactly desire lines, they are the things that link us together, part of our familial...
Coasting: Sidestrand – the moving edge
Sidestrand - the moving edge There are a few places where you can really see the dynamism of the erosion of the soft coastline. It is obvious along nearly the whole length of Norfolk and well into Suffolk, our soft glacial memory is easily eroded. Shifts can be seen...
Waterland: Strumpshaw fen
There is something mysterious and magical about the Broads. I've idled a fair while in the past sitting in a boat, the idiot at the other end of the line from the maggot or more correctly a dead lamprey or smelt when I used to fish. It's basically trying desperately...
Lost in a Landscape: Kett’s Lane, Swannington
I've written about Swannington before, but not Kett's Lane. It's a lovely slice of countryside, unspoilt for an area which was for a period in the mid twentieth century a fairly industrialised airfield. It sits between the main axial roads radiating outward from...
Lost in a Landscape: Little Ryburgh
A bit of a late addenda to a trip to Pudding Norton last year that ended up with a chase around the countryside near Fakenham looking at Deserted Medieval Villages, shrunken settlements and ruins. The whole area is haunted by the Flockmasters and full of such sites....
Coasting: Happisburgh Low light
It's a habit, almost a ritual. On Boxing day we go on a beach walk, blow away the cobwebs, usually at Happisburgh. This drives further back than our family now. We did the same when I was a child. My mum and dad and whoever else happened to be there on Boxing Day were...
Vanishing Points
The Great War series
Vanishing Points is a long-form photographic series with accompanying interpretation consisting of stories relating to the landscapes of the Western Front, memorials and some of the figures that peopled them.
A selection of 36 final images was made from over 120 photographs which formed the core of the 2018 exhibition and collection at St Peter Hungate in Norwich, The exhibition was timed to coincide with the centenary of the Armistice and ran for two weeks.
The response was truly staggering.
The original articles can be found on the links below and images can be purchased from the collection in the shop.
Articles
Vanishing points: The Bull Ring, Etaples
Etaples was one of the main base camps along the coast of Northern France, being a port, a lot of men, thousands of them would have disembarked here. Many more would have embarked. It was known as "The Bullring", as were most of the base camps, but this one was the...
Vanishing Point: Out of sight
Genealogy is an inconsistent science, and growing a family tree can quickly become an obsessive piece of semi-fictional detective work. The urge to push further and further backward heading into our peasant laden past, hankering after the occasional sight of a king or...
Vanishing Point – Langemark
Langemark is I feel one of the most desolate corners of the Western front. As I mentioned in another piece on Vladslo there is something so desperately bleak and sad about German cemeteries. They don't lack in any of the respectfulness of the loss or the death or the...
Vanishing Point: Devil’s Wood
Oak is a feature of the English psyche, a fabled national wood if there is such a thing. It proliferates throughout our history from warships and traders building an Empire to the familiar furniture and ancient twisting house frames. The royal Oak subverted to shelter...
Vanishing Point: High Wood
At locations like High Wood, sometimes the only way to start these things is difficult, so here is a Piece of Mackintosh, not perhaps his best poem, but he can sum up the general situation in the area of High Wood better than I can. He knows what it was like because...
Vanishing Point: Fricourt New Military
The best and the worst of it all are hidden over a brow. You won't find the chattering crowds of the nexus points where death draws itself to a peak, this is not Thiepval or the Menin Gate. Nobody talks, no one sniggers, there is no rustle of frite wrapper when a hush...
Vanishing Points series prints
If you would like to buy a Limited or Open Edition Print from the Vanishing Points series some are still available in the shop
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Blitz ghosts, bomb maps and more…
Ten years ago I did a thing, the echo is still rattling about in my head, occasionally it slides noisily back into my consciousness so I add to it, it’s mostly here.
Blitz Ghosts: St Michael at Thorn, Norwich
St Michael at Thorn, Norwich. Or it was. It stood just behind the Archant building, sort of opposite or adjacent to the shops that survived the flame-grilling of Bonds in April 1942, this is 11 years before the bombs fell in 1931. So I'm standing roughly, within a...
Blitz Ghosts: St Benedicts Church, Norwich
St Benedicts Church, Norwich is quite hidden away, a sad little relic. The tower is still there, preserved like like a thick flint chimney, or a Cloigtheach except no bells ring here, It reminds me of Messines in Flanders too. It's set in some grass just off St...
Blitz in Colour: Rampant Horse Street, Norwich, 30 April 1942
Rampant Horse Street, Norwich, 30 April 1942 – the aftermath of the second night of the Baedeker raids on Norwich, The Luftwaffe bombed across the centre of Norwich using incendiaries. There were too many individual fires for the wardens to put them all out the fire...
Blitz Ghosts: Aylsham Road
Aylsham Road, Norwich, April 1942 and nearly now, one of my first Norwich Ghosts. There are two pictures of the area. Both I believe taken by George Swain. The top Blitz Ghost is the first one I ever did, and the bottom one is the last. A 500kg landed here, it blew...
Norwich Castle Museum Ghost 1941 > 2012
Parachute troops, bare-headed and wearing 'jump jackets', in Norwich during exercises in Eastern Command, 23 June 1941. (Credit: IWM collection). Original Taken by Lt Puttnam, Official War Office photographer. Image of drizzle and murk, Nick Stone, Official...
Norwich Blitz Ghosts: St Giles
Upper St Giles Another Norwich Blitz ghosts, Baedeker Raids again, not entirely sure which night to be honest 27th or 29th, I'm thinking 27th when Barn Road copped a load. What is interesting here though as much as anything is you can see how the new Cleveland Road...
Through glass
Found slides, glass plates, photographs and archive material.
Through glass: North Norfolk holiday 1960s
Another small collection of found slides. These ones came via Martin Snelling (@LeftofNever on twitter), ex-Norwich lad, who runs View From This Side; a project which collects found transparencies and slides. I swapped them for a few slides of Albania, because... I...
Through Glass: Lowestoft early 1960s
I recently went to visit Phil to take some stuff back. I'm terrible for not getting round to things and I'd had a pile of glass sitting on my desk at work for about three months, it's heavy, he's shut when I'm open and open when I'm shut and I just never got round to...
Through glass: North Norfolk, Herbert Thomas Cave
A second set of Philip's glass. These are 6 x 6 inch glass plates, mostly in rather nice condition, a few are de-laminating slightly and they're a bit dotty in places but basically all sound. These are believed to be by a photographer called Herbert Thomas Cave. The...
Through Glass – Philip’s Glass: Norwich Trams
A few sample images from a batch of glass of Trams in Norwich I've got access to via a friend Phil. There are only three of these and they are in a bit of a state, looks like they weren't fixed terribly well and are quite badly smoked so I've had to pull them back a...
Through glass: 1960s Norwich – part 4, streets
Difficult to subdivide these really, so the obvious one was to produce a post of 1960s Norwich street scenes or buildings which were shot. Some things are instantly recognisable, others less so. some things just haven't changed much beyond a coat of paint, others are...
Through glass: Norwich 1960s – part 3, churches.
There aren't many of churches in the Phoenix collection, but what there are are fairly interesting. A selection and also some of the archaeological dig in near the Garth at Blackfriars and the Art College, Norwich. Norwich in the 1960s Part 3 St Helen's Church,...