One Year – Week 13

Project Description

One Year is a project through which I intend to construct a daily photographic record of a single view: the view from my study window at around 8.00a.m. each day when I sit down to work.  One Year will annotate each picture with a note of the weather for that morning and the morning’s main news headline from the BBC News site.  In addition, there will be a note taking a key sentence or two from my daily journal.

13 December 2013December 13th 2013

Thick cloud

N Korea: Leader’s uncle executed

…which reminds me that social housing doesn’t have to be dehumanising

 

 

14 December 2013December 14th 2013

Light cloud

ANC pays final tribute to Mandela

Yet another symmetry of numbers

 

 

15 December 2013December 15th 2013

Light rain shower

Funeral farewell to Nelson Mandela

The shadow of Polaris still hangs over this shipyard

 

 

16 December 2013December 16th 2013

Partly cloudy

Modern Slavery Bill to be published

Clouds scud across the luminous disc of the moon; the trees nod and sigh

 

 

17 December 2013December 17th 2013

Clear sky

Airport expansion options set out

The streets throng with the ghosts of long-dead travellers

18 December 2013

                                                                 December 18th 2013

Light rain

‘Great Train Robber’ Ronnie Biggs dies

Is a life ever completed, or is it just brought to an end?  The piano lid slammed shut for the final time

 

19 December 2013December 19th 2013

Sunny

General fears ‘hollowed-out’ forces

Dansette record player, cherry-red cream

 

 

 

Artist Statement

… “natural history” has no actual existence other than through the process of human history, the only part which recaptures this historical totality, like the modern telescope whose sight captures, in time, the retreat of nebulae at the periphery of the universe.

Guy Debord – Society of the Spectacle

The purpose of this project is to explore continuity and change.  Over the course of a year, I will build up a daily visual record of the same view.  Despite my best efforts, though, I will not be able to replicate the ‘same’ view each day: it is subject to changes in the environment, such as the weather or the time the sun rises.  But it is also affected by changes caused by me, the observer.  For instance, my feelings that morning may change the way I hold the camera or, inadvertently, the image may show my breath on the glass from getting too close to the window.

Looking out at the view on this, the first morning of One Year, I see a scene comprising sky, trees and rooftops.  I don’t see much evidence of human activity just yet, but that may come later in the year when the leaf cover begins to thin out.  Being on a flight path, we also see the odd vapour trail or aeroplane light in the sky too.

Some of the changes that will become evident will be pretty obvious, such as the seasons.  Other changes will be more subtle.  My daily notes will give some insight into what is going on inside my head that morning, from my journal entry, and there will also be a record of what is happening in the world in general, from the news headline.

But the ‘view’ I am recording in One Year is not neutral, it is selected and framed by me.  Similarly, my journal extracts are selected from a much larger body of work; it is the ‘insight’ into my thinking that I choose to present.  Even the ‘news headline’ cannot be regarded as neutral, for it is subject to BBC editorial bias.

But there is a third party in the One Year process, one that is outside of my control. That person is you, the reader of this blog, the interested observer of the project.  I want people to bring their own interpretations, views and insights to this project.  All comments received will be reproduced in my weekly project reports.

About Bobby Seal

Freelance writer, poet and psychogeographer
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