For ten days in June 2007 this was my family’s home. A converted caravan / chalet on a croft in Kilpheder, the Isle of South Uist, Scotland. I wanted to explore the notion that Kilpheder was my neighbourhood for the duration. How did we become a part of it and make use of it during our stay? So I set out to make a few pictures to describe the neighbourhood from a visitor’s perspective and all within a mile or so of the caravan.
Hamlets are characterised by well spaced dwellings and a lack of trees. Buildings are generally low to the ground and functional.
And some are not so pretty.
Few and far between, petrol stations dispense the life-blood of the islands. The roads are so important to the community for the continuation of business and commerce. And for daily jobs like grocery shopping.
The local store is one hub of the community that we visited frequently. Much of the fresh produce is sourced locally. It has to be.
Recycling is a very important in the Outer Hebrides. Some of the waste collected here is recycled on the islands, and some is shipped back to the mainland. Glass is recycled into a gravel-substitute for domestic use.
Lochboisdale Fire Station (in Daliburgh). A reminder that services like this must be essential but difficult to maintain.
The local school at Daliburgh. From the age of 14, children will have to attend a full secondary school on one of the other islands. Benbecula probably the most likely, being accessible by road.
Many buildings show extensive wear-and-tear and some damage. They are well weathered in this harsh climate. The rate of decay is high. There are lots of abandoned buildings here; often with a new one built right next door. The old is not replaced. It’s easier to just build afresh sometimes and land is not scarce. And dotted between these homes and derelict houses are the remains of dwellings that are hundreds and thousands of years old.
Cemeteries are found all along the coast, often overlooking the sea. Ancestry and religion are very important to the community. Christian icons and places of worship are very common place.
The neighbourhood of Kilpheder and all of the communities on the islands are within the natural environment. There is little opportunity to exploit or develop land; it’s difficult and expensive. Nature is always fighting back. There’s an abundance of open spaces; wildlife and wildness; water and green. The neighbourhood is a living thing.
Conclusions
South Uist has a stark beauty and truly is at the mercy of the forces of nature. This is not so obvious during good weather such as we had in June. Although I think the harshness of life up there does show through in some of the images. And the landscape itself with a lack of vegetation and trees is very stark to me. There are clues in my pictures that this can be a hard place to live in. A tough neighbourhood. We often romantisise the places where we go on holiday and I hoped to explore some of what ‘real’ life is like for the people that live there all year round.
Background
This project was conceived in response to my The Art of Photography Assignment 3. The theme of the assignment is My Neighbourhood. I really struggled with a subject as I was really reluctant to go out where I live with my camera – it’s big and obvious. One idea that I did go with for a while was ‘My Work Place Neighbourhood’. This had a lot appeal for me as I love photographing Manchester City Centre. I had the idea to explore the old bits of the city with my Lomo film camera and then contrast these with images of the newly built city centre (all slick and shiny) made with my digital SLR. I thought the two styles would work well together. Anyway, I had great fun with The Old, but failed to tackle The New; largely because it failed to interest me. So as a fall back plan, I thought I could photograph the neighbourhood of our holiday home in Scotland as well as attempt the rest of Natural Light (chapter 5 of The Art of Photography). I had visited two years previously and I knew I would enjoy the subject. And I did. This assignment also coincided very well with a project I was doing in collaboration with other photographers on the Utata web site. So I tackled this work as a parallel project.
Research
In preparation for the assignment, I did a small amount of research into an exhibition called Do Not Refreeze at the Cornerhouse gallery in Manchester in the spring. The exhibition centred around the work of nine photographers who lived in East Germany after the Second World War. The photographs that struck me the most were of the architecture and street scenes of East Berlin. Some scenes were nearly devoid of human activity and the pictures exhibited a starkness that I really appreciated. Although a completely different subject, I wanted to try and incorporate this kind of style into the project.
Related Links
Larger versions of the photographs above can be seen by clicking on them. They also appear on my Flickr account:
