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.
December 13th 2013
Thick cloud
N Korea: Leader’s uncle executed
…which reminds me that social housing doesn’t have to be dehumanising
December 14th 2013
Light cloud
ANC pays final tribute to Mandela
Yet another symmetry of numbers
December 15th 2013
Light rain shower
Funeral farewell to Nelson Mandela
The shadow of Polaris still hangs over this shipyard
December 16th 2013
Partly cloudy
Modern Slavery Bill to be published
Clouds scud across the luminous disc of the moon; the trees nod and sigh
December 17th 2013
Clear sky
Airport expansion options set out
The streets throng with the ghosts of long-dead travellers
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
December 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.
