Possible worlds

My new article about the photographer Raymond Moore, titled ‘Raymond Moore’s Uncertain Places’, has just been published in the journal Photographies, Vol. 15, No.2. To read the abstract and find out more about how to access the article in PDF or EPUB formats …

This was a report commissioned for Irene Rogan’s Arts Coucil England-funded project, Unpublished Tour, as part of my in-kind contribution to the project, reflecting also my work in helping to understand and facilitate actions and relationships that can be beneficial to the creation of a self-generating, self-sustaining cultural ecology in the region.

Unpublished Tour built on artist Irene Rogan’s earlier Arts Council England-funded projects, The Making of a Cultural Landscape (GFTA 2018) and Between Silence and Light (GFTA 2019) as well as the strong community links she has developed in south Copeland, and in particular in the town of Millom and its surroundings …

Christopher Saxton’s map of Cumberland, dated 1576, shows the west coast of the county bounded on one side by what might have been regarded as the perilous, uncivilized, ocean – complete with sea monsters – and a landscape to the east and south west that is dotted with strange-looking mounds (by the map engraver, Augustine Ryther) …

A new article has been published on the A66 through Cumbria at Places journal. As I write somewhere in the article, ‘to drive the A66 is to pass between worlds, from the apparently eternal mountains to the dynamic industrial coast — from the sublime to the subliminal’ …

Is there a secret Bob Dylan connection that migth explain the presence of his image (from the album cover Nashville Skyline) that flaps in the wind above the entrance to The Vagabond pub in Whitehaven? Read on to find out …

Yesterday’s book launch at In Certain Places was kindly catered by Prof. Charles Quick, who - one might surmise from this spread - has a bit of a sweet tooth … equally noteworthy is the long table, which Charles made himself. How many university professors can say that.

I was fortunate to have recently met the artist Irene Rogan at an Arts Council England meeting in Workington and finally caught up with her again in Millom, where she has a studio (located in an old school building) right next to the medieval Holy Trinity Church and adjacent to Millom Castle.

Cultural landscapes, as Christian Norberg-Shulz, writes in his influential text, Genius-Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture, consist not only of settlements – from houses and farms to villages and towns – but also the ‘paths’ that connect the places we live. In combination these two things transform nature into a cultural landscape.