After-life 2 - Severn Bridge

And then came Severn Bridge.
Not chronologically - first was Danes Dyke and then Immingham - but I'll write more about the series later.I'll just post as I go through.
Severn Bridge is famous enough as a feat of engineering, and in the UK at least it's famous as well as a suicide spot similar in notoriety to Beachy Head.
Richey Edwards' car was left nearby in the motorway services along with the many number of others who choose it as their place to go. The bridge imposes itself across the water and over the skyline and although I didn't go here for photos of just a bridge, it's hard not to gawp and click.
More info if wanted.

After-life

I'm collating all the images of the pseudo-suicide spots I shot now for prints and to put up on my website. I've got a piece to write to accompany it and also to lay out in order for a short run book.

With all the places I visited, I could see in each why it was picked - some obvious because of background connections or popular history - but inherent in all was the despair of both selection and practice.
None were random places of moment or at least they didn't feel that way and as much as many suicides can travel far to fulfil self-believed necessity, these could well have been decided upon months, if not years or decades, before.

I've called the series After-life for the reason that the act of faking suicide is not to full-stop life totally - it is to put a painful parenthesis around the former and then place everything in the plan of what comes next.

Below are the first I've been working on and are from Beachy Head, East Sussex.
Info for the interested.

All change on the camera front

Must be the cold lifeless / lightless weather that forces the photographer into changing equipment when there's little else to do.
All the Pentax digital kit has gone - replaced with a Canon 5D. The arrival of the 5D Mark II has finally shifted the cost of full frame down to my kind of level......

The Mamiya RB67 has also gone, superceded in a different way by an old 1950s MPP 5x4 press camera. Some issues resolved on this and negatives now coming out of it something like the images seen going in.
A day in the presence of the UK Large Format Photography Group and Lancashire Monochrome helped with some of the theory. Thanks to all and if you visit their forums , advice is freely given.

Some of the images below are from that day, others from others but all out of the MPP.

Graffiti

As you walk around and see the city, the amount of spraypaint scribbles and art seems to be growing. Perhaps new artists are seeing what can be done off the back of the Banksys of this world and adding tags to see in turn what they can do.
I think some of it looks fantastic and deserves places like upper space in Manchester - as I write this however, I've googled to find their site and due to the landlords requesting a 50% hike on the rent, the place is gone. Too bad and I hope from some of the stuff I've seen the collective produce, they find a home worthy of the talent on show soon enough.

Fake suicide spots

I'll post the full intro text for these shots once I've got the last of the images.
I'm mesmerised walking around these places as to the thoughts going through the minds of the people carefully laying down premeditated clues before they attempt to disappear as sucides.
For the suicide the place they commit is just part of the means to their chosen end - with the faker, the scene is as important as what they leave behind to be found: it is all part of an intricate fabricated plan. Regardless of whether they convince and for how long, the dedication and desperation needed is something to be admired.

All are being shot on the Mamiya with the 50mm and all on Ilford FP4.

Harris Open 2008

Two photographs entered into the exhibition, both accepted. They will be on show until late December 2008 within the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, Lancashire.
I'm looking forward to seeing what else is on show.

The first image is part of an ongoing series looking at the surroundings where people have faked their own suicide. Instead of a place that signifies the end and death - these places were meticulously selected as the area to restart their lives and begin again. The next post will have a couple more of these fake suicide spots.

The picture below is of a cigarette lighter complete with instructions. I don't know who the manufacturer thinks its target market is ( smokers I guess... ) but if you need instructions in order to fire up your smoke, I think it's probably time to quit.

Dead roads

Roads that have been laid but go nowhere, streetlamps that have been pushed in and never turned on, pavements flagged and don't reach any doorsteps.
Byways and highways where plans have been submitted and permitted but nothing has been built except for a slither of tarmac and strips of kerbstones to divide the wasteland from the wasted land.