Beneath the Surface / Hidden Place

This publication is the result of a photographic project (2007-10) which investigated the physical and emotional effects of economic change and regeneration. This involved close collaboration with individuals and communities across Scotland whose surroundings have undergone significant upheaval - whether caused by a decline in heavy industry, or housing regeneration. The resulting body of work consisted of 26 digital montages, which deployed two kinds of photographic language in articulating change to place: the family snap, and a contemporary landscape photograph. The contribution to knowledge is embodied, in the first instance, within these images. Location photography was completed by 2009; the touring exhibition produced in 2008 with new works added 2009-10. The 2008 exhibition consisted of 17 87 x 57cm prints, framed, unglazed; 7 57 x 35cm prints, framed, unglazed; 2 tables 2ml x 1mw x 77cmh with painted wooden tops of redrawn maps, family photographs and contact strips under glass. The publication was realized in 2010: fully illustrated, with an interview with the artist-author which discussed the project’s processes and conceptual concerns; an essay on Commemoration and Loss by Ray McKenzie; reproductions of selected exhibition images in addition to previously unseen images; also responses from three collaborators reflecting on their experience of the project. Dissemination of the project, its contribution to knowledge and the critical questions that emerged from a specific practice experience was realized through a series of key conferences (2009-2013). For example, ‘regeneration’ indicates a loaded territory; add to this, family photographs with their relationship to personal histories whose physical traces are on the brink of erasure: and recent critiques that interrogate the trend in contemporary art photography depicting places in terms of sublime dereliction