Thursday, February 09, 2006

The road is paved with good intentions


I set out to keep a regular flow of photos on this blog but events have conspired against me.

Today's picture is a companion to 'Lost Horizons.' Both were taken at the same event, a 'Fayre', (dis) organised by a now defunct environmental trust, who were later dumped, unceremoniously, by their parent organisation, Groundwork.

The event was ambitiously spread over an area the size of half a dozen football pitches. The mist came down, the local radio station's helicopter was grounded and those few who did turn out to participate were simply lost in the empty space.

To me it summed up the vacuous nature of the 'environmental regeneration' that was taking place, a bandwagon that minority political organisations were riding to death, and still are.

The stall in this image is fundraising for the 'Nationalist' Mebyon Kernow, a political organisation with an irrational separatist agenda.

It is not surprising that, with the introduction of Regional Government, there are genuine fears of a loss of identity among some communities. With respect to the 'environment' the fear raised by 'regeneration' is that even the landscape will lose its identity. A process the artist Andrew Lanyon calls "The Surreyfication of Cornwall".

2 comments:

Skippy Sanchez said...

hi- thanks for your compliments on the photos in my blog. the slideshow is done through picasa, another google service. my son showed me how to make the HTML & how to post it. i'm not sure i could do it again without his help.

i like your mine photo (and others on your blog) have you seen the latest issue of LensWork? http://enhanced.lenswork.com/previewpages/overviewcurrentissue.pdf

scroll down to some mine photos and an article in the book, but keep in mind it's a 'teaser' to get you to subscribe.

the M8 is a fine camera. it has a few shortcomings, especally for such an expensive piece of equipment, but all cameras have their limitations in one way or another, i suppose.
-skippy

Osscat said...

Thanks Skippy,

The images in lenswork are remarkable. The mining photos are reminiscent of those in the local Cornish Studies archive. Hard rock mining has a particular charm with vast cathedral like caverns underground.

My interests are in what is happening to the mining sites which are now turned over to public access and being exploited for the heritage industry.

The fear I have is that local history is going to be re-written for commercial purposes.

osscat