#leeacaster

I recently read an article by Bob Fischer, in Fortean Times magazine which had quite a profound effect on me. (Im a subscriber, although a hardened sceptic about anything supernatural, I’ve still always had a fascination with the unexplained, and this blog might go some way to explaining that), which can be read here. It’s pretty long, but for some of you, particularly those born in the early 1970′s it might resonate pretty strongly so its worth a read. 

It deals with a concept called Hauntology, which I’d never heard of before, but the reason Im writing a blog about it is that as soon as I started reading it I realised that it almost perfectly encapsulates both a lot of my photography, and the photography I enjoy viewing.

To put it in a nutshell for those who don’t want to read the full article, those of us born in the early 70′s or thereabouts grew up in one of two different worlds. There are those who remember the popular nostalgic view of the late 70′s and early 80′s of Roller skates, Abba and Pop Socks (look them up you younger ones). For some of us though, it was a childhood of Impending nuclear armageddon, frankly terrifying public information films, and a constant diet of oddly sinister children’s TV programmes. If this (the opening music of Picture Box)  makes the hairs on your neck stand on end then you are probably one of the Hauntology generation too. Whilst we had the usual light hearted kids TV shows such as Swap Shop and Supergran, the fact that kids TV was only on one or two channels for an hour or two a day meant we often ended up watching some altogether darker stuff. Z for Zacharia, Children of Green Knowe, Moondial and Children of the Stones all spring to mind. Basically junior horror films. Even the pre-school stuff was pretty unsettling. Fingerbobs is all I need to say here. 

The upshot of all this is that many of us who grew up in this time are instilled with a strange sense of uneasy nostalgia about it, and are often trying to express it creatively. I’ve tried to explain something along similar lines to this before in a couple of photography magazines interviews without really succeeding, it was only after reading the article that I realised that it did the job much better. 

In photography terms, I think I often see the landscape with a slightly darker view than some. Im naturally drawn to those elements that have a sense of disquiet and tension about them, and often make them the subject of my images. I kind of assumed I was alone in thinking along these lines to a degree, so its quite reassuring that there are loads of us out there.