Witnesses

Witnesses emerged as a theme for me when I was living in Frizinghall in Bradford in the late 1980s. Every day, we could see a gasometer from the kitchen window. It was close by and persistent. I became fascinated by it; equally, I saw it as an unwelcome blot on the landscape. It was huge. It was ugly. Wherever I went, I would come home to the gasometer. It was ever-present, watching over us. I was intrigued by how the gasometer became familiar and invisible after a while.

The other day, I went looking for the gasometer in Huddersfield to take some photographs. It’s gone! It was there quite recently, but suddenly it has disappeared.

In the early 1990s, the landscape in the Pennine hills around us saw the slow introduction of wind turbines. They have a beauty and a life. These white witnesses catch the light and spring into life as the wind blows. In this way, they are beguiling.

Subsequently, the number of turbines has multiplied exponentially, and to many, they are simply a blight. They are, arguably, necessary as we urgently need to leave fossil fuels behind. They are in the news again. 33 are planned for the moors between Hebden Bridge and Haworth in West Yorkshire - so-called ‘Brontë Country’. As this article sets out, the Calderdale Energy Farm would devastate the existing moorland.

Such structures support human life but, at the same time, they disrupt the landscape. Water towers, mine workings, tracks and roads, and mobile masts interfere with the landscape, but we depend upon them anyway.

As I walk the canals and cities around Yorkshire, my camera increasingly captures the iron railings that are planted to protect business units. Similarly, the metal shutters installed to protect our shops. Clearly, these security measures have become necessary, but how have we come to accept these ugly ‘keep out’ devices?

My interest in such structures as ‘witnesses’ is to record our uneasyrelationship with the environment. Their dominance, persistence, and effect are inescapable and powerful.