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 7th 2014
Sunny intervals
Stay with UK, Cameron tells Scotland
She looked at the back of Janek’s head, the way his blonde hair curled over his collar like the tip of a hawk’s wing, and shuddered
February 8th 2014
Light rain
Southern UK set for gales and more rain
Flowers she could not name, the like of which she had never seen anywhere else, seemed to bloom throughout the year
February 9th 2014
Light rain shower
We made mistake on floods – Pickles
A crow was patrolling along the guttering, taking two hops and then stopping to look down at the people below
February 10th 2014
Light cloud
Flood-swollen Thames at record levels
When Marijeka awoke it was already light. She heard footsteps walking past her room and saw shadows chopping at the light coming under her door
February 11th 2014
Heavy rain
Further severe weather expected
Striving to heal old wounds, slights upon the character of the landscape
February 12th 2014
Heavy rain shower
More flood fears as storms forecast
The pace of the film is perhaps slower than modern audiences have come to expect but, in Dreyer’s hands, this only serves to emphasise the quiet, ordered nature of this rural community
February 13th 2014
Sunny intervals
Power cuts continue after storms
A bright morning star in the south-eastern sky
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.
