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.

May 2^nd 2014

Thick cloud

Adams spends second night in custody

The voice of the water was honeyed, soothing

May 3^rd 2014

Light cloud

Army action resumes in east Ukraine

The taste of brine and iodine on his tongue, a crushing pressure in his chest so that it felt as if his lungs would burst

May 4^th 2014

Light cloud

East Ukraine stronghold ‘surrounded’

But it was the rucksack that bothered him; its weight pulled at his shoulders and seemed to crush all his joints right down to his knees.  Like the accumulated load of his life heaped up onto his back

May 5^th 2014

Light cloud

Baltacha dies of liver cancer, aged 30

‘Time is doing strange things,’ said the voice in his head

May 6^th 2014

Sunny intervals

‘Complacency’ leads to asthma deaths

The plan was a commercial disaster and the Duke of Lancaster’s shell now sits at the side of the river rusting away.

May 7^th 2014

Sunny intervals

US joins hunt for Nigerian girls

The 242 from Hackney to Bank and the conductor’s constant refrain: ‘Any more fares please? Thank you! Ta!’

May 8^th 2014

Light rain shower

Barclays confirms 14,000 jobs to go

My bus to Finsbury Park was late so Geoff got there before me.  He ended up meeting Roger Chapman and Charlie Whitney and having a pint with them in the George Robey before the gig.

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.