It is a few years since I last reread parts of this book, having first read it when it originally came out in paperback in 2012. One of the things I had forgotten was how much of a rag-bag, a collection of scraps and tatters, shreds and threads, it is, very much like the edgelands themselves. Infinite in their variety, shifting, mutable, hard to pin down.

That is what I felt about the Wire chapter this time round. It is an entertaining and interesting read but at the end it does not really pull together into something I feel is fully coherent. That is by no means a bad thing and is perhaps a reflection of the variability of these spaces.

What I get in particular from this chapter, which is something that already interests me and is something that I have explored to a limited extent in earlier work is how a fence, an ostensible barrier, can actually be so much more complex. They are physical barriers to keep people out (or in, going back to Donovan Wylie’s Maze project) but also means of entry. I remember as child, as the chapter touches on, using the so-called barrier of the chain link perimeter fence to get inside the compound of a local factory (where I ended up working briefly as a summer job when I left school, but then I walked in through the front gate) which during the war had built armoured cars. The attraction, the irresistible pull, was a number of bunkers and air-raid shelters that were still there, scattered around the perimeter: damp and smelly but occasionally with interesting thirty year old scraps still to be found (this was in the 1970s).

It also got me thinking about a couple of more substantial barriers that I am familiar with that have multiple connotations. One is very old, Hadrian’s Wall, stretches of which are not far from where I live. This strikes me as not simply being physical barrier meant to impede movement: in some places it is nigh-on impenetrable because of the underlying topography on which it is built; in other it is not much of a physical barrier at all. Rather what this structure is about is power and control. It is a statement of ownership – everything south from here is ours! – a tangible, physical manifestation of an abstract concept. It is about control in so far as traffic passed both ways through the wall – there are various places where ancient roadways, paths and tracks, cross the line of the wall – so these became places where trade could be regulated, and more importantly, taxed.

The other, more recent and something that was contemporary with my own lifetime until it was breached in 1989, is the Berlin Wall. This was designed to keep people in, not out, though paradoxically by enclosing the small enclave of West Berlin. It also became over time a monument and memorial to those who tried, but failed and died in the attempt, to cross it – like Farley and Symmons Robert’s memorials attached to fences and barriers. Even before it was breached and even more so since 1989, it became a huge open-air gallery, much graffitied and painted on the “west” side, an extensive, not to mention potentially deadly, mural.

The Power chapter is also a bit mixed The focus on power generation stations, old fashioned ones burning coal, of which few now remain in this country following “dash for gas” – which are not actually much more ecologically friendly – says a lot about how we take so much of the infrastructure of modern life for granted, how so much of it is invisible, mysterious, banished to the exurbs where it can be seen from a distance but not encountered close up. Space, distance from the city, open ground around these sites, becomes almost as effective a barrier, physically and psychologically, as the wire fence.

The last couple of pages dealing with photography, particularly the typological work of the Bechers, and the “before and after”, post-industrial work of John Davies, are a bit of an abrupt change of pace, almost a non-sequitur if it was not for the common subject matter of industrial structures. Nevertheless, one thought that occurred to me is that this photographic work is important because it is typological, because it acts as a record, a remembrance of a recent past that is steadily being erased physically, but also mentally. It is important that these places, their functions, their societal importance and significant, be remembered.

Coincidentally, as I think I have mentioned elsewhere, I have recently been looking again at Davies’s work in his recent “Retraced” book (2019), showing industrial, rural and urban, scenes and their post-industrial appearance. Appropriately given my reference to the Berlin Wall above, he does the same out of thing in Berlin comparing and contrasting how the city looked before and after 1989.

Something else that came to mind reading this chapter was the work of Mitch Epstein and what I noticed was an interesting contrast. In this country these power stations are generally separate, if not actually remote, from places of habitation. In many of Epstein’s picture the power stations and industrial plants are cheek by jowl with and loom over suburbia.

Davies, J, (2019).  Retraced 81/19.  London:  GOST

Epstein, M, (2011).  American Power.  Göttingen: Steidl

Farley, P & Symmons Roberts, M, (2012).  Edgelands.  London:  Vintage

Coming back to psychogeography, the last post was written from a mostly literary perspective. Now I want to put down some thoughts from a speficially photographic point of view, taking as a starting point the three photographers mentioned in the course material.

The first is Brassaï. Initially I thought, yes, a psychogeographic photographer. On second thoughts though I am much more skeptical that he was. Certainly he photographed Paris, geographically certainly, and arguably psychologically in so far as he spent a lot of time in pursuit of the demimonde and Parisian nightlife. To that extent he chose the home of modern psychogeography as we know it, and he does have some of the appearance of the flaneur. I do wonder though whether that is really right.

I have difficulty with the idea of him as flâneur to start with not least because his use of a large format camera and magnesium flash does not strike me as being compatible with, let alone practical for, the aimless stroller. What is more he clearly had a certain milieu in mind and went in pursuit of it. It is not as if he stumbled upon his subject matter just by strolling around. On that basis alone I would suggest that Henri Cartier-Bresson fits the bill better, though even then I am not convinced, as I will explain when I come below to the subject of street photography.

The decisive point for me though is that many of Brassaï’s photos were actually staged, carefully posed and arranged, with people standing in for the ‘types’ he was looking for. I had not realised this until I read Stuart Jeffries’s article in the Guardian cited below but it now seems almost obvious when looking again at his pictures. Here is the particular example that Jeffries singles out in his piece (unfortunately not a very good copy but easily findable through Google or Bing Images):

The posing of the figures and the composition, pivoting round the multiple reflections, now seems obviously contrived.

Before moving on I suppose it is worth considering, albeit only very briefly, another photographer of the cityscape of Paris, Eugene Atget, who admittedly is not mentioned. Again I do not think he fits the bill: no flâneury, more of a typological than psychological recording and cataloguing of parts of Paris. The only example of his work that I feel come close are the more surreal, random (?) shots of reflections in shop windows.

What of Robert Adams (whose writing I probably know better than I do his photographs) and his Summer Nights Walking? This I feel is more encouraging.

Although these are ostensibly just a collection of topological views taken on nocturnal walks around his home time I do feel they have much more psychological depth. They say so much more about the way of life in this town, which could probably stand as an exemplar of much of suburban America. They say much about the suburban domestic attitude towards night-time. Whereas in Brassaï’s Paris people came out at night to play, here they retreat behind closed doors and drawn curtains. There is almost a sense of menace in these pictures as if the camera, and we the viewers of the photos, are prowlers, looking for an opportunity to get up to no good.

At a superficial level, principally because of their nocturnal nature and the use of lighting, they call to mind some of Gregory Crewdson’s work but none of these seem to me to have the same sense of artificiality and contrivance. Crewdson’s work is often deeply psychological but rarely, to the limited extent that I am familiar with his work, in a specific, rather than generalised, way geographically rooted.

Mark Power’s work is new to me but comes across as the most psychogeographical work that I have looked at so far. There are clear echoes of the subjects written about by Farley & Symmons Roberts (2012) and the sort of places considered by Ian Sinclair. What I get first and foremost is a sense that these are not necessarily psychologically easy place to live. There is a strange almost post-apocalyptic absence of people and some of the places look more like the aftermath of a war-zone.

Rarely has an otherwise ordinary suburbia, or perhaps more appropriately exurbia, looked quite as menacing and unsettling.

This has set me thinking in more general terms about psychogeography in photographic terms. For example, where does the broad church of street photography stand in relation to the concept? My immediate reaction is that mostly it does not. So much street photography seems to be more concerned with human activity, and particularly the catching of people unawares, than addressing how they relate to the environment within which they are captured on camera. Coming back to HCB, he seems to be more concerned with capturing that elusive moment (I am not a devotee of the idea of the decisive moment, as I have written more than once elsewhere!), the sudden confluence of events and elements that makes an interesting picture, rather than how that is affected, caused, or influenced by the environment, notwithstanding that some of his work is set in quite specific geographical locations, such as India and China.

Casting my eyes over the bookshelves in my study two artists leap out at me as fitting more closely the idea of psychogeography. One is Guido Guidi. I am not sure about his work in Sardinia and around his home town of Cesena but I do think there is an element of the concept in his work in the Veneto (2019) in so far as he is not just picturing marginal and marginalised areas but how those places, policies of development and land use practices, have affected life there.

The other, more specifically, is Daido Moriyama, with his repeated, obsessive strolling around the Shinjuku area of Tokyo – a Japanese flâneur – compact camera in hand observing anything and everything going on, recording the environment, warts and all, the people, and the way the place affects their lives. There will no doubt be others who also fit the bill but Moriyama is for me the one who stands out most clearly as being the nearest photographic equivalent to one of Debord’s situationists.

Guidi, G, (2019).  In Veneto, 1984-89.  London:  MACK

Moriyama, D, (2017).  Daido Moriyama: Record.  London:  Thames & Hudson

Moriyama, D, (2016).  Daido Tokyo.  Paris:  FondationCartier pour l’art contemporain

https://www.markpower.co.uk/projects/26-DIFFERENT-ENDINGS

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2001/feb/06/artsfeatures

Before getting to the next exercise, some initial thoughts about and observations upon the concept of psychogeography on the basis of my reading to date.

The first is more of a question: why London and Paris? These two cities are at the roots of and dominate much of the writing (at least that I have read) on psychogeography. Debord and the Situationists were of course based in Paris. It is from Paris, thanks to Baudelaire, that we have the figure of the flâneur, particularly as subsequently developed by Walter Benjamin, and although Debord’s formulation of psychogeography does not specifically refer to the flaneur he (or she, the flâneuse), the stroller is implicit within the concept of the dérive as the means of carrying out psychogeographic research.

In London we have, historically, Defoe, Blake, De Quincey, Stephenson, and Machin, among others although in writing about London I doubt that they would necessarily have recognised themselves as psychogeographers. Latterly of course we have Ackroyd and Sinclair. I have to confess I have not read much by Ackroyd as I actually find his almost monomaniacal focus on the city to be overwhelming, to the extent of almost being a parody of itself. Sinclair I have read more though I do find his writing style sometimes a little overwrought and mannered for a comfortable read.

And of course there is also JG Ballard, but I sometimes wonder if his work is more psycho than geography.

Where are the other cities? I see from his book (2007) Will Self has sought to extend the scope of investigation to other places, notably New York, but so far I have only had a chance to skim through it and not yet read it closely. (Another confession: I am not a great fan of Self’s writing so although I have a copy of his book I am not quite straining at the leash to spend time on it.) Rebecca Solnit has written extensively about San Francisco in a way that I suppose counts as psychogeographical, and walking generally. She is also just about the only woman that I can currently think of who has addressed the subject, particularly the role of walking, in any concentrated way, which begs another question: where are the women psychogeographers? (Pace Rachel Lichtenstein mentioned below.) I am rereading her chapter on Paris (2002, at pages 196ff) at the moment and might come back to her again in a later post.

The opening question remains unanswered. Or is it just that because of the roots in London and Paris similar explorations of other cities have not made their presence felt here?

My next question is why the prevalence of writing on and about cities? Is it as much as anything a practical issue, that it is difficult to be a flâneur, to wander aimlessly in the countryside? At most, particularly with Farley & Symmons Roberts (2012), and of course Ian Sinclair’s orbital walk around the M25 (which I have not read), it seems to me exploration has pushed only as far as the edge lands.

I do not really feel comfortable with appending the label of psychogeography to much contemporary nature and topographical writing, which simply does not seem to be concerned with quite the same things, though I accept that there is an argument to be made in connection with the psychological effects on us of exposure to nature, wildlife and place. Nevertheless I still feel somewhat resistant. Partly I think the issue is of the inappropriateness of the idea of the flaneur in the country. Merlin Coverley makes something of a case for this in the preface to the latest edition of his book (2018) but, as I read him, decides that ultimately the label that is attached to any given work is not what really matters.

Incidentally, he identifies more women wandering into the otherwise solidly masculine realms of psychogeography but unfortunately I cannot comment on them as I am not familiar with their work, with the exception of Rachel Lichtenstein whose book (1999) I read years ago, which was, surprise surprise, co-authored with Ian Sinclair!

I wonder though if a stronger case might be made for earlier works, such as William Cobbett’s Rural Rides, given the influence of his Radical politics? Does that give him something more in common with Sinclair and Debord? Unfortunately these are questions that I cannot answer or explore further for now as I have never before read his book properly (not since I was introduced to bits of it at school more than forty years ago) and do not currently have a copy.

I would venture that perhaps Sinclair’s Black Apples of Gower (2015) fits the bill, notwithstanding that it is as much about Ceri Richards as anyone or anything else. Partly this is a matter of his style and the way he writes about the subject but it does strike that it is significant that he engaged in an exploration of childhood memories specifically through the medium of walking. Something similar might also be claimed for Robert Macfarlane’s first book (2003) though I hesitate somewhat that mountains are not really places where one can indulge in aimless wandering. Of his more recent work I do think his chapter on Invisible Cities (2019) (at pages 127 ff) does fall into the category but then we are back in, or underneath, Paris again.

A few more points to close with to avoid this post becoming too long. Unfortunately I have not been able to listen to Philip Pullman’s discussion of the Manet painting. The Guardian site requires the latest version of Flash Player which for some reason will not instal on my computer (a ten year old iMac, possibly because it cannot run the latest version of Mac OS) and is similarly not supported by my iPad. This is frustrating as Pullman is a writer I admire and picking apart this deeply enigmatic painting is always interesting – I had not thought of the gent, through whose eyes we, the viewers of the painting, rather alarmingly regard the young woman, as a flaneur but given the strong undertones of sexual exploitation it makes sense to me.

Brassai, Adams, and Power I have not yet looked at properly but as a trio of photographers they are probably worth addressing separately.

Lastly, I am struck by the fact that apart from Coverley and Self all of the books cited below are ones that I have already read some years ago, or where more recently, independently of this course.

Coverley, M, (2018).  Psychogeography.  Harpenden:  Oldcastle Books

Farley, P & Symmons Roberts, M, (2012).  Edgelands.  London:  Vintage

Lichtenstein, R, & Sinclair, I, (1999).  Rodinksy’s Room.  London:  Granta

Macfarlane, R, (2003).  Mountains of the Mind.  London:  Granta

Macfarlane, R, (2019).  Underland.  London:  Hamish Hamilton

Self, W, (2007).  Psychogeography.  London:  Bloomsbury

Sinclair, I, (2015).  Black Apples of Gower.  Taller Fratrum:  Little Toller Books

Solnit, R, (2002).  Wanderlust: A History of Walking.  London:  Verso

Solnit R, (2006).  A Field Guide to Getting Lost.  Edinburgh:  Cannongate

As will be evident from some of my other work, particularly for C&N, I am a bit wary about combining photographs and text for fear that the latter can restrict the meaning of the image, or subvert and distort it. The idea of using text to make a piece of art is though a different matter.

I have had a look at the websites for Ed Ruscha, Barbara Kruger and Mark Titchner as recommended by the brief for this exercise but do not actually find any inspiration here. Whilst I admire Ruscha’s gas station paintings, for example, I find his text works do nothing for me: I struggle to see the point of an apparently random statement superimposed over a painting of a mountain. Kruger’s work is interesting but still does not affect me. Titchner’s work comes across to me as little more than empty sloganeering. Maybe I am being a little unfair to them all, but this is simply art that I do not like and from which I find I extract very little meaning.

Much more interesting and influential I find the text works made by Richard Long (on whom I am writing a separate post), Hamish Fulton, and some of the work of Autumn Richardson and Richard Skelton, to which I will return below.

For the purposes of this exercise I have started by making two lists rather than one as I have in mind different means of presentation for each. These are the product not just of one journey but a few over the last week or so. All stem from my daily dog-walking routine.

In the first I have made a list of all of the types of trees and shrubs that I can see (and can identify!) around here. Not all are necessarily native but at least they are all wild. I have deliberately excluded various of ‘plantation’ trees, ones that would not otherwise occur naturally in this area, such as the Pines and Spruces. Here is the list:

Apple, Ash, Beech, Birch, Blackthorn, Bramble, Broom, Buckthorn, Cherry, Chestnut, Dog Rose, Gorse, Hawthorn, Hazel, Holly, Hornbeam, Ivy, Larch, Oak, Rowan, Yew.

The second is of birds that I have seen on these same walks. There are a lot more varieties of birds about that I see on a regular basis at this time of year but I am excluding them because I have not seen any recently, such as Dipper, Goldfinch, Heron, Kingfisher, Red Kite, Mallard, (and obviously not including birds that are not here during the winter):

Blackbird, Bullfinch, Buzzard, Chaffinch, Crow, Dunnock, Jackdaw, Jay, Kestrel, Magpie, Nuthatch, Tawney Owl, Pheasant, Wood Pigeon, Redwing, Robin, Rook, Sparrowhawk, Starling, Mistel Thrush, Song Thrush, Blue Tit, Coal Tit, Great Tit, Grey Wagtail, Wren.

For the first list I take inspiration from Richardson and Skelton who have produced some text based works relating to trees, particularly those collected in Relics (2013). For each of a selection of trees they have created circular works made up of rings formed by various names for each tree, modern, ancient, dialect, and so on. The effect is of a cross section through the rings of thee tree. There is a form of dendrochronological effect in the finished work in so far as there is a temporal progression from the oldest form of the word in the centre to the modern on the outer ring. For example, Ash:

Taking this example as a starting point I have created my own version using a selection of the trees recorded on my walks, with Yew and Rowan alone on the inner two rings and pairs of trees, arranged nothing more than alphabetically, on the others:

This is a bit rough-and-ready, nothing more than an initial sketch. I do not have any programs on my computer which would enable me to make anything like this so I have simply roughed it out by hand on a sheet of paper. Although in need of further work and refinement it nevertheless serves for present purposes and gives an indication of what might be achieved. As a first attempt I do not think it has come out too badly!

For the bird list I have two ideas. For the first I unfortunately cannot remember where the idea comes from (I thought it was either Richard Long or Hamish Fulton but cannot find any examples of their work that fit the bill). I know though that I have seem similar work before. The idea is to take a map, at fairly large scale, of the immediate area where I live and walk my dog, and put a ring on it, with a half mile radius circle centred upon my house, made up of the names of the birds on the list. (I have not yet had a chance to try a mock up to see how it might work in practice.)

The other is based on Richard Long’s text works: a simple list of the birds but the size of the text varying depending on the frequency of sitings, from abundant as the largest to rare as the smallest. The text sizes are not strictly to scale but simply give an indication of the relative numbers of each species, and of course do not reflect their relative physical sizes. Again this could be refined and worked on further but here is what the first attempt looks like:

Richardson, A, & Skelton, R, (2013).  Relics.  Newcastleton:  Corbel Stone Press

http://www.barbarakruger.com

https://www.corbelstonepress.com

http://www.edruscha.com

https://hamish-fulton.com

http://marktitchner.com/work/