The Story of Roundabout / July 14, 2020 by Jacqui Booth

In my work, I try to express emotion through my landscape photography, and I bear in mind questions about whether work should have an objective theme, or whether it can be purely personal.

Roundabout is intended to be a visual explanation of my emotional state whilst considering my ongoing frustrations regarding freedom to access green spaces, trespassing and the urban environment, particularly the impact of traffic.

It is a response to a minor car accident, back pain, a difficult relationship, weeks of flu and the anxiety that traps me close to home. The fire that propelled me to travel (or was it escape?) has diminished, quelled by the responsibility I have for my children and my home. It has rooted me to the spot, made me weak and sometimes confines me to my bed. Things scare me. Really scare me.

I have learnt to reliably move my body in beneficial ways. As Lee Hazlewood sang "I've learned to do some simple things. Like lock the door and shut the lights". I wake the kids, clean the kitchen, make some food, shop online. Activities are safe: out with friends, visiting cities, using public transport. The result is that the wildernesses I love are largely out of bounds.I pick up a camera or two and explore close to home, almost a genre of landscape photography itself[1].

I seek out the pockets of green overlooked by industry, where traffic rages metres away or buzzes continuously on the periphery. I try to suspend reality, to enjoy this faint taste of freedom. But the land is spoilt, it's inadequate, damaged and poisoned. It reflects me.I want to stretch my legs, to walk for miles without hitting towns, to hear the silence and feel my heart settle. Is it healthy to live like this? I don't think so.

It's been documented that nature is beneficial to those suffering from depression. “Controlling for individual and regional covariates, we found that, on average, individuals have both lower mental distress and higher well-being when living in urban areas with more green space.” [2]

However, a UK study finds differently “after adjustment for confounding by respondent socio-demographic characteristics and urban/rural location, the association was attenuated to the null”.[3] The report goes on to say “While we did not find a statistically significant association between the amount of green space in residents’ local areas and mental wellbeing, further research is needed to understand whether other features of green space, such as accessibility, aesthetics or use, are important for mental wellbeing.” I find this is revealing.

Looking around my mostly urban area, there are city parks, verges and further out, fields and a few country parks (of the pay your parking fee, be gone by dusk variety). I appreciate these but they are structured, small pockets of shared space in which we are ‘allowed’ to visit if we have a car and the fee. In addition to this, many ‘green’ areas are simply there because the land has no value for further development. The term ‘Edgelands’ was conceived in 2002 by Marion Shoard to describe “The interfacial interzone between urban and rural”. It is not necessarily a new concept, as a hundred and fifty years earlier Victor Hugo gloriously declared these areas "bastard countryside...ugly but bizarre, made up of two different natures".

These areas hold an unconventional attraction. This is my environment. The work I’m making is borne of this. My photographs show the damage inherent in these zones but include an element of hope as nature pokes through the poisoned ground. It’s a metaphor for how I feel, how I adapt, how I compromise within my surroundings and yet hope to grow.

Image from East Meet West Publication, 2020

References

1 Irvine, John (2015) A Path Not Far... Landscape Editions Volume One www.kozubooks.com

2 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23613211 Psychol Sci. 2013 Jun 24 Would you be happier living in a greener urban area? A fixed-effects analysis of panel data. White MP1, Alcock I, Wheeler BW, Depledge MH.

3 https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/research/publications/524371 BMC Public Health, June 1, 2017 A cross-sectional analysis of green space prevalence and mental wellbeing in England Victoria Houlden, Scott Weich and Stephen Jarvis

Teenage Werewolves: NOT landscape photographY / May 18, 2019 by Jacqui Booth

Taking photos of gigs isn't something I do every time I'm out. It's fun but there's always a photographer more confidently doing their stuff. These creatures take many forms (hello Ollie, it's always nice to see you in your ear defenders) but this time it was a giant of a man stood slap bang in front of me, so the first few shots are worked around him until he moved to one side for a while. Yeah, I should have moved forward alongside him, but it takes some guts to do that and I felt a bit quiet at first. Besides, I was there to see the gig primarily.

So, this is a tribute band. Yeah, that’s unavoidably just a little bit cheesy at best. Yeah, it felt daft getting dressed up to go to the spit and sawdust Musician pub on a Tuesday evening, but this was Teenage Werewolves, the prime Cramps covers band, and it would be fun.

It was one hell of a show. A generously packed set with no support. In the absence of Lux Interior, Jack Atlantis performed the ass off performing. Attempting to catch Atlantis still enough to photograph in low light was as hard as trying to photography a hen without blur. He must have covered a couple of miles and even some altitude on the tiny Musician stage. It's not a feat that will be matched any time soon.

We danced, we sang, things got covered in beer, I got a damn hard wallop in the back from a particularly inebriated bloke but that's the price of being small and at the front of a gig (it really shouldn’t be this way but I won't get scared away - it's my space too). Loads of Cramps gems were covered, plus covers of Teenage Kicks, Teen Spirit and a Clash cover which was even good by my Clash hating standards!

They call it progress / December 20, 2018 by Jacqui Booth

“When we destroy something created by man, we call it vandalism. When we destroy something created by nature, we call it progress.” -Ed Begley Jr.

Nope, I've no idea who Ed Begley Jr. is. An American actor, says Wikipedia, but I liked the words in relation to these photographs of the local railway sheds. Clearly, the scene has been 'created by man' (I've never seen a woman working in the sheds - they seem to be assigned to period dress and tea duty only in this microcosm), though I'd argue that it was nature enough. Every time I visit the Great Central Railway, it's not the trains that fascinate me, it's this area of ramshackle storage containers full of useful odds and ends that eventually become restored engines. Every time I'm allowed to wander through the sheds, smell the oil and peep at the work in progress, the tools and the workbenches I appreciate the access...and the people working there wonder why I'm taking photos. "We had some students in here once taking photos..." they'll say, totally unaware of how special this unpretentious environment is.

I took these photos a nearly two years ago and since then I've had little time to devote to such things. I haven't now. I want to be studying but I'm cleaning the house ahead of Christmas, which is long overdue and hindered by a back that needs to be a little stronger for such things. Still, I'm making progress in my microcosm, though it's influenced by what I think a house should appear to be, criticisms from family and ideas about home style (mostly ignored) rather than simply providing a safe, warm environment for my family and friends. Tools and guitars will be moved, offcuts of wire and piles of sawdust eradicated, albeit temporarily. My own clutter will be tamed. Still, until tarpaulin chic is fashionable, it's probably for the best.

Slight return / November 6, 2017 by Jacqui Booth

I've been gone this past year. I've had things to do. Fortunately until recently the Inside the Outside Collective and Tim Andrews kept things ticking over with exhibitions of my photos in London and Brighton, but at home in Leicester I lost weight and stopped going out. I found out some pretty bad things about my new spread-way-too-thin self and actually some good things too. I now have sole care of two other human beings and so I cope.

This has meant that I've not been able to dwell on taking photos. I remember at the early stages one person saying that I would have to give up such 'frivolities'. I already had in effect, but I was angry. This was something that meant so much to me. Why should I be a drudge, a cook, a mother*, a worker, a cleaner and nothing else? In reality as I sit here listening to the washer, with food that needs to be put away in the kitchen and hair that needed dying a month ago it's really not viable, but there's not one day that has passed that I don't remember that there was something more.

So, time to step into the way back machine. Back when I still had an almost reckless sense of adventure that I'm hoping will still be there when I regain some freedom both physically and mentally. During my first solo holiday with kids, I had to be coaxed up Snowdon by my eldest child, but I'm getting stronger.

This is Denmark, from July 2016. I've already posted some film shots of this trip, but this is what I found and chose to record digitally. Thanks to John Blakemore and Joseph Wright for a hand with the sequencing, whilst on a Bookmaking course at the Photo Parlour in Nottingham, though admittedly the raw materials were seriously lacking. I watched the other photographers sets coalesce into something meaningful, but mine just wouldn't. So, let's get rid and move on at last!

* I could actually argue that being a mother is pretty fucking important, but it's still not really seen that way, is it?

Last summer / July 3, 2017 by Jacqui Booth

So...where to begin? It's perhaps best not to even think about it too much. So much has changed since the last time I blogged about any photos, mainly because so much has happened personally. It's okay, I've still had a smile on my face sometimes, but hell, it's been stressful and will continue to be for the time being.

It's difficult to place how I feel about a lot of my photos that have remained stockpiled. It's not only because I'm so tired at the moment that my elbows keep slipping off the desk. They're just from another time.

This lot are already nearly a year old and I think they were taken to test the AGFA, which seemed very reluctant to give me a good photo on my trip to Denmark. There's still something going on with it that I'll suss out another time. Since then I've taken almost sole responsibility on a day to day basis for my two teenage lads and (fortunately) for now I have the family home to look after. The lads and I are grappling with shopping, cooking, cleaning, GCSE's and all the emotional stuff they feel when their parents royally fuck up the nuclear family thing and quite suddenly start seeing new people.

On this day the sun shone, my youngest protested strongly about getting out of the car at all and a most likely autistic lad laid in a ditch for a whilst his parents patiently waited for him to settle. A regular day out but I knew when we came here as a four that it was for the last time we'd be such a unit at Sherwood Pines. It was almost bittersweet. I drove, the kids eventually played happily together in a place full of happy memories and I took some photos...