My photographic portfolio sets out to tell a story in pictures and is based on lyrics written by Steve Knightly and featured on Country Life, the eleventh studio album by English acoustic roots duo Show of Hands, which was released in 2003.
The title track and album opener, Country Life, is a poignant and finely honed tirade about the desecration of British country life and a bitter condemnation of modern values. Inspired by the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak but increasingly relevant today, the song examines rural poverty and social exclusion based on the experiences of an extended local family, and as told from the perspective of an angry young man.
Using an environmental portraiture approach and through the medium of cyanotype, I set out to show rural people interacting with their surroundings in a way that illuminates the subject's life. But along the way, it quickly became apparent that the rural scene is just as much about the people who are no longer there – pushed out by rising property prices, lack of jobs and public transport, as well as the increasing industrialisation of farming – as the ones who remain. This is strongly reflected in the lyrics that accompany my images.
My photographs were taken using a Canon EOS 550D, and digitally enhanced in Adobe Photoshop to change the saturation of each photo and overlay the typographic elements.
The cyanotype process combines 21st-century technology and 19th-century photographic techniques to transform the original set of digital photograph and create powerful images that resonate in time.
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Image 1: Country Life
Rural men and women are proud of their heritage, their land and their stock. The opening image shows a farmer at one with his old but lovingly maintained tractor, both of them hardworking and indispensable to the farm. |
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Image 2: The first cut
Working in the rain cutting down wood
Didn't do my little brother much good
Lost two fingers in a chainsaw bite
All he does now is drink and fight
The rural countryside represents a work place but it is also a dangerous place with tractors, farm machinery and chainsaws in everyday use. Each year in the agriculture, forestry and inland fishing sector, around 4% of workers suffer from an illness they believe to be work-related and 4% of workers sustain a work-related injury. Last year, 160 farm workers died at work. This image illustrates just one of the potential sources of harm faced daily by rural workers, where health and safety is paramount but challenged by the nature of machinery in use.
Ref: Agriculture sector. (2015). Retrieved March 19, 2016, from http://www.hse.gov.uk/Statistics/industry/agriculture/index.htm
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Image 3: A man of many parts
Sells a bit of grass, hots up cars
Talks of travel never gets far
Loves his kids left his wife
An everyday story of country life
Young people living in rural locations learn to drive at a younger age than those living in urban areas. The majority pass their driving test and get their own cars before they reach the age of 20, reflecting the high priority of car ownership for the rural population in general. In one study, over 40 per cent of 17- to 18-year-olds were shown to be driving their own cars. For the rest, the 'no car, no job' situation is a classic face of disadvantage in rural areas. While many of these cars are old and high maintenance, they represent independence and are cherished by their owners. This image shows the local mechanic in his valuable ‘parts graveyard’ behind his workshop.
Ref: Young people and transport in rural areas. (2000). Retrieved April 6, 2016, from https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/young-people-and-transport-rural-areas
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Image 4: Empty box
And the red brick cottage where I was born
Is the empty shell of a holiday home
Most of the year there's no-one there
The village is dead and they don't care
Second home ownership is a problem for rural communities for a number of reasons. A lack of available housing and increasing property prices forces the next generation into the town, while the incoming weekenders typically bring their food and other resources with them, so contribute little to the community financially and aid the loss of rural amenities, such as shops. The lack of people in this image is intended to convey a message of the missing rural generation.
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Image 5: Last orders
Now we live on the edge of town
Haven't been back since the pub closed down
One man's family pays the price
For another man's vision of country life
Many rural areas have lost their pub, and with it the hub of the local community. While there are still around 48,000 pubs in England today, more than 29,000 pubs have been 'lost' or closed in recent decades. In 2016, there are 3000 pubs in imminent danger of closure, demolition or conversion, while 29 pubs a week are being lost across the UK. This image, depicting vegetation growing over abandoned barrels and bottles, is symbolic of the closure after the publican called ‘last orders’ for the final time.
Ref: Four pubs close EVERY DAY in the UK. (2015, November 18). Retrieved March 10, 2016, from http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-3323833/It-really-closing-time-Four-pubs-shutting-DAY-UK.html
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Image 6: Proud soldier
My old man is eighty four
His generation won the war
He left the farm forever when
They only kept on one in ten
After World War II, many British estates were broken up into smaller more intensive production units, aided by increasing mechanisation and a consequential loss of agricultural jobs. This image shows an old soldier holding his shotgun as proudly as he would once have held his rifle while on parade, while the seed drill he leans on is a remnant of the last of the horse drawn machinery of the era and a nod to the dig for victory campaign that helped keep the country alive in the war years.
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Image 7: To the manor born
Landed gentry county snobs
Where were you when they lost their jobs
No-one marched or subsidised
To save a country way of life
The landed gentry are often asset rich (land and property) but cash poor and, for many small estates, the ‘big house’ became more of a curse than an asset, requiring frequent and costly upkeep. This image shows the local ‘lady of the manor’ with the ancestral portraits, with the ancestors perhaps looking down haughtily at what’s left of their legacy and considering whether the present incumbent is worthy.
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Image 8: In the line of fire
Silent fields empty lanes
Drifting smoke distant flames
Picture postcard hills on fire
Cattle burning in funeral pyres
Foot and mouth in 2001 was a devastating blow for the British dairy, beef and sheep industry, and many farmers left the industry altogether in the aftermath. Our increasingly urbanised society fails to realise that without our grazing livestock, whether lost to disease or economically unviable milk prices, the countryside will no longer be managed to create ‘picture postcard’ views. This image recreates the horror of the funeral pyres that raged across Britain during the foot and mouth epidemic, the ear tags representing the more than 10 million sheep and cattle that were shot before being burned on sleeper-fuelled fires.
Ref: Boyde, Carl . (Presenter). (2007, October 31). Inside Out. BBC.
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Image 9: The deepest cut
Out to graze they look so sweet
We hate the blood we want the meat
Buy me a beer I'll take my knife
Cut you a slice of country life
In the UK, consumers are far removed from the production of their food unlike many European countries where even city dwellers have a link to a family plot. UK consumers shop with their wallets rather than their conscience, and have no real concept of animal welfare on farms and within abattoirs beyond our shores, or increasingly within with controversial halal slaughter on the up. This image shows a local farmer with one her lambs, born on the farm but destined for the table.
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Image 10: The last man standing
If you want cheap food well here's the deal
Family farms are brought to heel
Hammer blows of size and scale
Foot and mouth the final nail
Farm income in the UK has fallen by over 50% in the last five years. In 1939, 4.5% of the country's workforce was in the farming industry. By 2000 this had fallen to 1.3%. In the last two years, one third of the UK's 150,000 farmers have quit, while more than a quarter of English farms now rely partly on additional non-agricultural income. This image featuring the unmarried elder son of a small family beef unit reflects the end of the line as he will probably the last to farm this particular land.
Ref: Pettifer, J. (Presenter). (2001, April 1). Crisis in the Countryside, Panorama. BBC.
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Image 11: The silence of the lambs
The coffin of our English dream
Lies out on the village green
While agri-barons cap in hand
Strip this green and pleasant land
Global agribusiness are buying up land, increasing the scale of production and changing the British landscape. Traditions and family farms are lost and, along with them, whole generations of local families who may have lived in and around the village for centuries. This image represents the families who have long worked these lands but will now be left behind as their descendants pack up and leave the village forever.
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Image 12: The end of the line
What went wrong. Country life
It's a little bit of country life.
The portfolio closes on an image of despair and resignation, mirroring a business landscape where rising farm costs, reduced farm income, agricultural industrialisation and lost community are leading us to the end of the countryside as we know it.
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