OTHER SIDES OF LONDON- LANDSCAPES RENEWED/ CITY LIGHTS REVISITED

About

The photographs presented in these linked sets are the outcome of activity in and around London over recent months. Initially they developed from a body of analytical work, mainly published on the website www.earthtransition.com, into prehistoric structures and ways of conceiving the significance of prehistoric landscape modification. In particular, the "Landscapes Renewed" images centre on the pre-Roman site within Epping Forest known as Loughton Camp. Astonishingly, around 2,500 years since construction, it still figures prominently as a socio-natural presence within the space between the Lea and Roding rivers as they approach the Thames from the north. The site can be understood at least in part as a variant or corollary of the great henge structures (Avebury, Stonehenge, Castlerigg) that, some two thousand years earlier, heralded the neolithic transformation. Such a linkage leads to the association of "iron age forts" such as the one represented here with the contradictory root of modernity. As such the ditch and rampart of Loughton in their stillness complement the expanse of fluctuating activity, structure, power, poverty and luminosity that constitutes London. Away from the conventions of familiar urban ways, they are a hauntingly contemporary presence on the edge of town, apparently beyond the reach of "City Lights". These photos are about shadow and light and possible ways of relating to them. They deal with form and echo, with memory and potential.