‘Heartwood’ is a photographic study into the landscape of Old Winchester Hill. Located in the South Downs National Park the hill extends to 150 acres of National Nature Reserve and is home to many species of rare plants and wildlife. The area has a rich and complex history expanding from the Iron Age to the present day and is preserved as a Site of Special Scientific Interest.
My approach has been to study the landscape from a variety of different perspectives and to build a strong personal connection with the land. This practice driven body of work has been informed by diverse strands of enquiry, from direct experience to scientific studies, each evoking the landscapes multifaceted character.
Using a range of cameras, I find ways through which the land may reveal its underlying stories and history. Using night vision infrared sensitive cameras, I observe how animals inhabit the forests and disappear during the day. I also document the archaeological artefacts the hill has gifted over the decades and research into the history of its human inhabitation.
I have spent many months walking the land and used a digital camera to document the experience of being there at all times of day and in all types of weather. Finally, I took a British 1940's MPP Micro Technical large format camera into the most wounded part of the forest. During World War II the military used the hillsides as a site for testing mortars and in response to this, I have created a set of images looking at the hill as something that has stood witness to man’s inhumanity to man.
The interplay between human actions on the land and the life of the land serves as a profound reminder of the damage we do, both to ourselves and to all those sharing this ecosystem. I once wild camped in Winchester and Symbiocene felt like the immersive experience of that night, showing me all that I couldn’t see, taking me beyond my limited human body experience into a wider network of beings. Pieces like Wayfinder and Revelation are incredible visual storytelling. I’m transported and wrapped in eternal tales that remind me how safe and dangerous the wild can be. The concertina book is astonishing in how much it conveys.
This project makes me feel humbled by Nature and curious to become better entwined. I hope this project is treated as the resource of learning that it is, a rich, deep comment on the relationship between humans and the world we belong to yet so grossly mistreat. This body of work does exactly what art should do, it makes you feel awe and wonder, it provokes reflection and contemplation. It makes you feel incredibly human, but also more than human.
Hannah Fletcher
Student of Anthropology and Archaeology, Winchester University
I have loved Old Winchester Hill for many years, and visited quite a few times (though not as often as I would have liked), so Heartwood, for me, is to meet with an old friend - but at a level of intimacy that I have not hitherto known.
As a poet and an archaeologist, with a love and a reverence for Nature as the soul and centre of my life's focus, Heartwood calls to me in all of its facets but, if I had to pick one particular aspect, then perhaps the night vision camera images of the various beasts would win the day. But then, crowding in behind that choice comes the exquisite concertina Book of Heartwood.
The project moved me and delighted me with its melancholy, it's profundity, and it's so elegantly-rendered beauty.
Its viewing will touch many hearts, as it has so deeply touched mine.
Phil Breach
Poet and Archaeologist based in Salisbury, England.