Week 1: 6/1/25 - 12/1/25

Today I was given a project in which I have to pick two locations, one rural and one urban, that have some form of connection. Whether that connection is visual, historical, physical, or otherwise. I was told that I will need to produce a body of work from 5-10 images that display these locations and their connections all within eight weeks.

I had two ideas almost immediately. The first was to explore the town I grew up in (using that as my rural element) and where I live now in Ipswich (as my urban). These do not have a physical or visual connection, but they are connected through my own experiences. At first, I thought this would be an interesting thing to look at. It would show people the changes in my life as I grow older and transition from a teenager to an adult and hopefully it would remind them of their own transitions and growth, but this more introspective approach may alienate an audience and therefore actually disconnect a viewer rather than the aforementioned intention. The second idea, that I have decided to run with, is looking at train lines. When sitting on a train you can often see the urban landscapes of cities and big towns melt away into trees, fields, and other rural areas. This intrigued me as then the project is not about just a rural and an urban area that connects somehow but is instead about that connection. I am studying and learning the space, the limbo in between the expected subjects.

The only question is how to do it. I thought about trying to contact trainline companies such as Greater Anglia to see if it would be possible for me to actually go down onto the tracks and take pictures along the line, almost as if in the perspective of a train rattling down its line, however, I decided against this as it is mainly unsafe but also contact Greater Anglia and arranging a date for someone to walk the tracks will take far longer than the eight week window I have for this project. So now I am thinking about taking pictures on the train out of the windows showing the view and the changes you can see from rural to urban whilst being part of that space. I also think I should get out at every station and take a picture of the view from the platform as that would show the transition that is waiting to happen.

I have done some research into the line I am thinking of using. The Southend Victoria to London Liverpool Street line as this is the line I would use all the time before moving to Suffolk as I lived along it. Below are some pictures of the spaces around some of the stations that show the differences between urban and rural that era shown along it.

This shows one of the bridges in between Hockley and Rayleigh station.

This is Billericay station, a prime example of how fast urban becomes rural.

Finally here is an example of Southend Victoria showing one of the rural ends of the line.

Week 2: 13/1/25 - 19/1/25

To start the week, I had a critique of my ideas with some colleagues (which is to hopefully become a weekly thing) and got some very helpful feedback. Firstly, I was given the actual name for these areas of limbo between rural and urban. Edgelands. I think that lends itself to be a rather nice title for my project. I was questioned as to why I chose London Liverpool Street to Southend Victoria as my train line for this project and short of ‘I lived there so I know it’, I didn't have an answer which made me question it again myself so I might change the line and use the Ipswich one rather than have to make a journey back to Essex. I also was given the advice to “not overthink it”. So, to simplify it, I am now just going to take pictures out of the window of the train. I plan to use the windows frame as a frame for my photos and I will attempt to show the view from the windows.

These ideas left me with things to think about, but I wanted to see how other photographers worked on projects to do with following a set line to see if there were any points of inspiration and angles that I hadn't yet considered. For this I went to the library on Tuesday and have signed ‘Sleeping By The Mississippi’ by Alec Soth out as that follows Soth's journey along the regions surrounding the Mississippi River.

Finally, the idea of being interested in these limbo spaces, these edgelands reminds me of a poem by Edward Thomas called ‘Adelstrop’. It goes as follows.

Yes. I remember Adlestrop—
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop—only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

The poem is about a time when Thomas took a train journey, and the train stopped at the disused station of Adlestrop. I think this links to my project as Adlestrop is in a rural part of Gloucestershire and has now fallen to disrepair and has been taken back by the grass and willows and nature and is itself transitioning from being part of an edgeland to becoming one with nature again. To me, the poem could be taken as a comment on what will happen to all of societies buildings and structures once humanity dies out. It will all be left and fall into disrepair, but nature will live on, and it will embrace our legacies and sweep them away like footprints in the sand.

Week 3: 20/1/25 - 26/1/25

Unfortunately, I didn't have any new images to show off in this weeks critique as over the weekend (when I had planned to shoot) the trains were not running and we instead had bus replacement services. So instead of showing new images we focused on how my research had been going so far. I was helpfully given “new nature poetry” as the name of the genre for what ‘Adlestrop’ falls under and I was also encouraged to look at another book called ‘Rings of Saturn’ by W.G Sebald, which was already on my list of things to investigate. The book describes a walk along the Suffolk coast and further inland toward Norfolk so as I am now focusing on a train line that stretches through Suffolk, I feel this recount from a highly respected author will allow some light onto the scenery that may appear like what I encounter along the train line. Through some further research I have found that a film called ‘Patience: After Sebald’ was made about the book and the walk it details. I'm planning on reading the book this week and then shooting some pictures on a train in Essex as I am going back there this weekend. I also do want to watch the film so if I don't fit that in this week I will put it in next week.

Week 4: 27/1/25 - 2/10/25

On Monday I couldn’t make it to the regularly scheduled critique as I woke up this morning feeling rather ill. However, I am well enough to sit here and update my research. Since last week, I have read just past the train journey in ‘Rings of Saturn’ as well as watching ‘Patience’. It is an interesting film with some beautiful imagery to back up and support points made by other writers, publishers and creatives in general about Sebald's writing in ‘Rings Of Saturn’ and him. They talk about the journey in the book and reasons behind it, the emotions that are felt after and during long journeys and the concept of journeying as a whole. I have also managed to take pictures just as I had planned so below are some of the photos that I have taken so far.

These were taken on the line that connects Shoebury to London Fenchurch Street using the camera on my iPhone 16. I'm not the greatest fan of these because they seem a bit soft and unclean. This might be possible to fix using Photoshop, but I am going to experiment first using my Canon 4000D as it is a proper DSLR. I will then compare the two unedited sets of photos and go from there. The first eight photos in the grid show shots taken right on the coast of the Thames estuary with the boats moored at a place called Leigh-On-Sea (which is one of the stops along that train line). Next week I am planning on doing my actual shoot on the line from Ipswich to Norwich.

Areas which have been highlighted for potential further development are making images from one location to another and concentrating on the landscape in between each destination. As the line runs into London, I could use the Photoshop tool that allows for AI generated content to fill a selected part of an image to try and place parts of London's skyline in the background of the image.

The idea shows how interesting the developments of AI are when being applied to photography. There are many photographers that see the use of AI in photographic practice as ‘cheating’ but I think it is important to look at it as the newest development. Photography has gone through many changed since its inception with the most recent shift bring from film to digital and at first, digital cameras were looked down upon just as colour film was when that first started to circulate around the photographic world. I believe that, if given time, AI will probably become just as normal in photography as the use of Photoshop and other editing software. That said however, I don't think that AI is that relevant to this body of work but whilst thinking about what work I would consider relevant, I thought about the work of Andreas Gursky and, particularly the cover to his self-titled book from 2018, ‘Utah’.

Gursky trained under the Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Dusseldorf School of Photography, and it was here that he mastered the art of objectivity. Some people may consider that his work rather dull and uninteresting at first glance of an untrained eye but it is very important to take note of his composition. This is something that he picked up from his time with the Becher's as they were also known for this skill. Both the Bechers and Gursky often use an elevated position with a medium format camera and take their shot of their subject, often architecture or landscapes, as head-on as they can. With a lot of their work, there is no argument about what the subject is as it stares straight at you. They are masters of objectivity. In this piece Gursky has said that he and his wife were on a road trip through the USA, and he realised that the camera on his phone is like the photographers' equivalent of a rough sketchpad for and artist. He took photos of thing out of the car window that he found interesting and then the next day he decided to use his professional equipment. As they were driving through the state of Utah, they came across these prefabricated houses dotted along the side of the road. This links to my project as it is the view from a window of a vehicle travelling through these edgelands. They could both be used as a comment on the destruction of wildlife or on the other side of that argument to talk about underdeveloped housing but either way, our work is it at least visually very similar.

Week 5: 10/2/25 - 16/2/25

This week I went on the train into Norwich to get the photos I needed. I used my Canon 4000D as planned a took around 50 photos, so I need to thin the collection down before I approach printing. However, I'm not sure if these photos are good enough. The train windows were all rather dirty and they all had this strange, gridded mesh in between the panes of glass. Looking at them straight away, I am not pleased as this mesh has given the photos a foggy almost limescale like sheen across the photos. Here is an example of below.

This shows what I mean by having that grey sheen. Part of me quite likes this but I'm not sure if this distracts from the image so I am not sure if these are good enough for my project. I've decided to leave the whole lot completely unedited and wait until the next critique to see what everyone thinks about them.

Week 6: 17/2/25 - 23/2/25

This week I was given some great feedback. The group liked the images and said that the grey effect created by mesh gave my images, quite literally, another layer. When I said that I wasn't sure because I felt it made the images “dirty”, a member of the group said “well is that not what part of the English countryside is” which, I suppose, it is. Now I allowed myself to accept what I first thought was a mistake as somewhat of a ‘happy accident’, I could see the strengths of the images. In our discussion a word has kept cropping up throughout which I have never been quite sure of what it meant. He said the images had a “painterly” feeling which is defined on the Tate website under their ‘Art Terms’ page as the “application of paint in a 'loose' or less than controlled manner, resulting in the appearance of visible brushstrokes within the finished painting”. This style is seen in a lot of work by the very famous, especially locally within Suffolk, John Constable as well as the likes of Claude Monet and John Singer Sargent.

From left to right:

‘The Hay Wain’ by John Constable in 1821

‘The Water Lily Pond’ by Claude Monet in 1899

‘The Fountain, Villa Torlonia - Frascati, Italy’ John Singer Sargent in 1907

Now I was looking at it like this, I realised that the mesh not only adds this softness to the images to give it this painterly aura but upon closer inspection and careful consideration, the mesh itself lends itself to becoming like the stitching of fibres a painting canvas is made from.

By the end of the critique, I decided that my best course of action for this week would be to narrow my photos down to a collection of 10. Then I am going to go further with this idea of pursuing the ‘painterly’ aesthetic. To do this I am going to try and edit the photos in a way that removes the aspects of the train so that it is just the view from the window. I can crop and use mask tools in Photoshop to do this so it shouldn't be too hard to do. This will make my photos appear like the work of artist John MacIntosh Patrick.

‘*A City Garden*’ by James McIntosh Patrick in 1940

Now I have narrowed down the collection to these 10 and I have edited them, so they are ready to print in rough. I will bring this in on Monday next week (24/2/25) to possibly narrow it down further and making my final selection for the final prints.

Week 7: 24/2/25 - 2/3/25

This is the penultimate week before the submission date so it's time to make sure that everything is printed and ready. In the final critique today, I brought in the 10 rough prints I mentioned to narrow the selection down just a little more before I print on photo paper.

After showing the group, I had narrowed down my selection by removing 2 more photos. Now I have a final 8 and I'm ready to print. Im not sure on how big to print my images as I want them to be big enough that you can see the detail in but, like most people, money is tight.

Eventually I settled on printing my eight images as 8x8 inch squares. Once these came out of the printer, I knew that this was the right size. I would have loved to make them bigger, but I can't afford that right now, so these are the perfect balance between my two criteria for me.

See The finished result here

The Limbo Between The Edgelands: Research