The Arrow of Time
‘The appreciation of landscape is more personal and longer lasting when it is mixed up with the memory of human incidents. It also endures beyond the fleeting when aesthetic pleasure is combined with scientific curiosity. Intense awareness of environmental beauty normally comes as a sudden revelation. Such awareness is least affected by received opinions and it also seems to be largely independent of the character of the environment. Homely and even drab scenes can reveal aspects of themselves that went unnoticed before, and this new insight into the real is sometimes experienced as beauty.’
Yi Fu Tuan
The images presented here emerged from what might be described as a sudden revelation (a walk with my family which became my first encounter with the site). The appreciation of the site is hopefully one that will be long lasting, containing a distinct human history (a now disused nineteenth century railway cutting constructed by 2,000 poorly paid Navvies) and will endure, as the aesthetic pleasure of the site is combined with a scientific scrutiny (a 10x8 camera creating highly detailed photographic imagery in response to the site). The potentially drab, dark rock is transformed into a form of beauty; one that reveals elements of time – both in terms of geology and human intervention.