Welcome

This blog is a process journal; it will follow the creation of a series of photographs that will be exhibited and hopefully published in 2012. This work is part of the Community-University Research for Recovery Alliance; you can read about this initiative at the CURRA website.

The photographs appearing in this blog are created by scanning large and medium format, black and white negatives. This is to approximate as much as possible the look and feel of the silver gelatine prints that will form this body of work. Not all these images will appear in the final version of the project as much of the work of the photographer involves editing and choosing the images that best suit the ideas to be expressed. By clicking on the individual images you will be able to see a larger version of the image.

The reader will hopefully be able to get a sense of how such a body of work is developed through time as well as gain insight in the decision and editing process that I will use as the work develops. Please feel free to add comments on either fish plants in general or about the blog.



Saturday, April 4, 2009

Diamond Cove - 03

Since first holding a camera, I have been attracted to industrial architecture. There is something engaging about the purpose built structure; especially once it no longer suits the purpose for which it was built. The Fish Plant project is the second long-term project I embark on to look closely at these sites, and by look closely I mean to be amongst them and experience their presence and the history that echoes in the particular light and shadow they express.

That they were once used for something is extremely important; what they were used for is mostly a question of context or an excuse for an editing strategy. The politics of the abandoned building end up being implicit in the photographs; once a viewer knows what the building was used for and is confronted with the reality of its present state a reflective process on industrial social complexes inevitably comes about.

With the Fish Plant project I am thinking a lot about how these buildings, spread about the coastline, reflect their use/misuse as well as the identities of the communities that surround them. It is my hope that by presenting images of various sites in a unified context will invite a viewer to see a larger picture of how the fishing industry has been part of shaping a sense of place in coastal communities.

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