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.

February 21^st 2014

Light rain shower

Ukraine ‘peace deal’ after clashes

He was eighteen at the time.  Friends they had in common told him the two of them were made for each other.  He never did get round to meeting her

February 22^nd 2014

Sunny

Ukraine president office ‘unguarded’

Angela was three years older than him.  She worked in a library and liked to visit historic sites

February 23^rd 2014

Light rain

Tymoshenko urges protesters to stay

She sounded great; it was the idea of being ‘fixed-up’ that appalled him so

February 24^th 2014

Light rain

Russia recalls Ukraine ambassador

That song has a haunting quality that always takes me back to that day so many years ago

February 25^th 2014

Sunny

Ukraine to appoint unity government

Sunday afternoon, work finished, sitting in the car with the other two, driving across the marshes

February 26^th 2014

Sunny

Ukraine not East-West fight, says US

I need to write a business plan.  No one will ever really read it, not even me.  I just need to have one

February 27^th 2014

Sunny

Standard Life could quit Scotland

The trouble with Dogme 95 is that they announced the rules to the public.  Gnostic film-making, now that’s the future

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.