I would like to talk to you, about a journey I made recently. But that journey had a purpose, and so I should really talk about that as well. And so if I begin with the journey before I discuss the destination, then we’d be left with a fascinating narrative, but perhaps not a lot of sense.
Purpose first it is then.
As regular readers will know, for the last few years I have had two main things happening in my photographic life. I have taught photography, to the best of my distinctly average ability, at the school of art where I had previously been an MA and a PHD student. And I have continued to work on my project of documenting the protests of the Extinction Rebellion movement.
Well, the first of these diversions is no longer the case. With the conclusion of the semester one exam boards earlier this year, I ceased to be a lecturer. Perhaps one day I will be again. But at the same time, I became again a PHD candidate, and will be for the next two years. Since I suspended my studies in September 2020, rather a lot has changed. The world has come through a pandemic. I’ve gotten older, if no wiser. And so much of what I planned to photograph and document has simply ceased to be, and so a new thread was required for this project.
Well, here it is. For the forseeable future I will be photographing the fate of Britain’s cold-war aircraft. Where they are. Who cares for them. Who looks at them, observes them, studies them. I aim to answer a few questions through this body of work, not least the question of the connections people make with these beasts, and the level of nostalgia and memory they seem to attract. I’ll be asking whether we can see them as memorials to a war that never broke out. And finally, I’ll be asking whether these hulks in the museums are alive in the same way that they were when they flew – the spirit that we attribute to aircraft (and cars, and steam trains, and ships – by no means to all cars, trains or ships of course, but to many). I’ll be photographing museums and airshows and all sorts, and I’m rather looking forward to it.
That’s the plan at least. By nature it will change. So far it’s embraced my love of photography, of engineering (or appreciating engineering– for god’s sake don’t ask me to do any!), of history. And now, as I seek to bring out the meaning and history and setting behind what I depict, the old millstone of English and prose and poetry is returning to haunt my door. At the rate I’m going my love of the theatre will reappear next, and visitors to aviation museums will be met by the sight of a bald, bespectacled photographer declaiming the St Crispian’s Day speech to a disinterested Avro Vulcan. Time will tell.
In practical terms, I can look forward to long journeys bearing cameras. Not a great departure from what I’ve been doing, or so it may seem, but here’s a difference. My project on the Extinction Rebellion, was (is) open ended. I had no idea when I began the project what for it might take, and I still don’t. But this new project, the Cold Warbird project, will conclude (or at least reach some benchmark) within the next two years, it will form an exhibition, it will be written up in a thesis. No ifs, buts or maybes. These are the rules of the game.
Further rules. Images will be analogue (that was an early decision – these are not digital machines I am photographing, so why capture them with digital media?) and captured on monochrome 120 format film. 6X6 square format throughout.
So – photographs of the curation of old aircraft, to show their connection with people, their status as memorials and the old question of whether they have souls. And so, we have the purpose for my journey.
What we don’t have is space left to talk about the journey itself. Next time perhaps….
Photos By Alex 