Things to look at and read

Lost in music

A few years ago I did an album a day thing on social media, not entirely sure why on reflection, I guess it passed the time and time does passes. Music behaves as a bit of a catalogue or bookmark of favourite, or not so favourite, passages – it's part of our timeline,...

Through Glass: Norwich 1900

A few years ago I was fortunate enough to have a box of glass slides come into my possession, here are a few of them, one day I'll get the whole lot scanned in and shared. But for now here are a selection of Norwich through the glass from about 1890 to 1920. I suspect...

Vanishing point: Before endeavours fade

I'd been meaning to go to Holborn and take a photo of this chap for years. This is my grandfathers regimental memorial, he was in the 1st RF (of which I have already posted plenty), I collect these things for some reason I can't fathom. The memorial is a finely...

Coasting: Eccles beach – far away in time

Eccles beach. Not Echo Beach, but I like a nice inexpensive joke derived from a slightly odd eighties lyric now and again, you just watch me. There are a fair few Eccles in Britain the famous one is in Salford, where those crumbly buttery cakes with raisins in that...

Coasting – Bacton

Bacton; a place name to conjure with if you know North East Norfolk's emptier fringe. A confusing piece of coast where as you move north of Happisburgh; the cliff drops and as it swings further round and there is a vale where Walcott sits. A series of tiny villages...

Painted saints – Digital conservation and visualisation

A while back I wrote something about Swafield, which you can find here. I visited it for various reasons, one of which was the rood screen which is rather lovely. This isn't uncommon in Britain, it's especially true of East Anglia and Norfolk. It set me wondering what...

Lost in a landscape: Little Witchingham

There's a sea of barley, the horizon a shadowed thin night cloud line of trees. In the late afternoon heat this far from the coast there's no wind, no air sucked in by the heated land to move the thorned tops. Everything is calm. The summer hasn't advanced enough to...

Lost in a Landscape: Heigham Holmes

We went out on Sunday, for a saunter. The weather window suddenly being kind, blue skies and a bit of a breeze and the flat lands of Norfolk. It's easy really when you live here to forget how lucky we are, the cliche of our vast skies gets lost as we all head off to...

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...

Lost in a Landscape: Trunch

There’s a lot in a name, Trunch has one that doesn't fit in in Norfolk, or in fact in England. Locally it sits uneasily with the profusion of ~hams and ~tons, and ~bys and ~thorps. East Anglia’s toponymy is that of the invaded, repeatedly settled. People who move into...

Last breath: Rosary Cemetery

Rosary Cemetery My inclination was to put this into the hidden history category, but then I remembered how often I end up sauntering around with people I've never met, but whose names I can see, in the light and shadows of trees and bushes and stone and thought it all...

Vanishing Point: The Redoubt

There are areas of the Somme where you can really feel the past; where the landscape whilst modified hasn't been essentially changed. This is one of those places. What remains isn't difficult to spot and is easy to get too a walk down a grass clotted, tyre rutted path...

New from The Flatland

Forgotten Norfolk - Brian Wells

Buy stuff

New Forms – City

Photographs of Norwich North taken from forever to 2023

Vanishing Points

Western Front prints from 2012 to 2018, from the 2018 exhibition.

Colour

Landscapes, prints from various series and some one-offs by request.

Lost in a landscape

Various prints from the East, Lost in Landscape and Coasting series.

New Forms – edge

Photos of Great Yarmouth 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.

Coasting: Guns of Mundesley

Coasting: Guns of Mundesley

An odd little place is Mundesley, somewhere between Victoria and now you can sense a fading into much more of a backwater than was probably intended by the holiday destination builders. A pretty Victorian resort perched on high soft glacial sand cliffs, protected from...

read more
Dead cities: RAF Swannington

Dead cities: RAF Swannington

RAF Swannington Known locally as RAF Haveringland, either way it's a little Gem, I spent the best part of a blisteringly hot afternoon messing around on the edges of an all but invisible Second World War airfield. It's just there, lost in the landscape, the fields...

read more
Lost in a landscape: Bacton Wood

Lost in a landscape: Bacton Wood

Feet facing the sun – Bacton Wood When I was a child we had a dog called Sally. She was what the local vet referred to as a Daisy Dog, a mixture of this and that, pretty well mannered and a bit tatty, a cross breed of indeterminable heritage with a long black coat...

read more
Coasting: Eccles beach – far away in time

Coasting: Eccles beach – far away in time

Eccles beach. Not Echo Beach, but I like a nice inexpensive joke derived from a slightly odd eighties lyric now and again, you just watch me. There are a fair few Eccles in Britain the famous one is in Salford, where those crumbly buttery cakes with raisins in that...

read more
Lost in a Landscape: Bawsey – the Church on the hill

Lost in a Landscape: Bawsey – the Church on the hill

It seemed rude not to, I've been driving past Bawsey for far too long, so on a trip to Derbyshire to drink and take in a band (Phantogram) with my Nephew Rich, I made an attempt to stop. In fact I had two attempts at it, Sundays' mission was stopped by the heavens...

read more
Coasting: Happisburgh – Where the wild thing were…

Coasting: Happisburgh – Where the wild thing were…

Happisburgh, a curious place to find yourself, a favourite place of mine – the quality of the light on an eastern coast is strange, the ever-changing riven landscape, the beating sea. It sits 20 miles to the East of Norwich, below the stretch of coast where the cliffs...

read more
Coasting: Lost lands – West Runton

Coasting: Lost lands – West Runton

Another one of my favourite bits of Norfolk coast, lots of reasons; my childhood, our children played here, I spent a lot of my teens mooching about between the slipway with Vodka and the Village Inn with beer, staggering up to Roman Camp to doss on mate's floors and...

read more
Bixley – the lost village

Bixley – the lost village

Bixley barely exists as a place, not far from the A146, it is now largely a track to a church which until relatively recently served the rural surroundings and a diminishing population. The last human connections are the graveyard and the landscape itself which still...

read more
Lost in a landscape: Horsford Castle

Lost in a landscape: Horsford Castle

Horsford Castle When you look at the area surrounding Norwich quite how much there is in quite dense groups, we're ringed with hidden areas that aren't well signposted, or exist only in documentation and on old maps, or in some cases are even acknowledged;...

read more
Lost in a Landscape: Horsford Woods

Lost in a Landscape: Horsford Woods

Horsford Woods I like to get out, occasionally with a target in mind, sometimes just to wander. This is one of the various places in Norfolk which involves bronze age barrows; ancient cemeteries lost in the landscape, with a nice ancient heath and a possible medieval...

read more
Lost in a Landscape: Warham Camp

Lost in a Landscape: Warham Camp

Warham camp is the best known and best preserved iron age hill forts in Norfolk. Hills aren't that popular here, we like our sky to go right up to the edges of everything whenever possible, but that doesn't mean they don't exist, it's not the fens, those are flat....

read more

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

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

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

Like what I do?

If you like what I do you can support the site running costs here by sending me a few quid using Kofi. Always much appreciated.

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.

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

Through glass

Found slides, glass plates, photographs and archive material.

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

Persistence of memory

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

Black Dog Tales

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

Georeferencing

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.