The Rugged Places The Rugged ArchiveAnne-MArie Atkinson BhAvAni esApAthi

IntroductIon By chrIs Woodley-steWart

The Rugged Archive

The Rugged Places

essay By BhavanI esapathI

photoGraphs By anne-MarIe atKInson

PORTRAIT GRID

IntroductionchrIs Woodley-steWart, dIrectornorth pennInes area of outstandInG natural Beauty (aonB) partnershIp

A couple of years ago I spent a few days with a group of young people from Weardale, turning one of our geological trails into an audio-visual production to download. I was struck by how different they were from the tired stereotypes of teenagers - they were articulate, inventive, eager to learn and, best of all, really supportive of each other. They were a credit to their families, their school (Wolsingham) and their community.

They, and the young people in these photographs, are lucky to live in such a beautiful and special place - though they may not always think so as teenagers. They live in a place with a strong sense of community, a remarkable history that echoes all around them, and a natural beauty that is sometimes wild and bleak but always vivid and breathtaking.

There are challenges for young people here: the relative remoteness brings its own obvious challenges and even surrounded by millions of people teenagers can

often feel isolated - for some this may be amplified by the remote locations in which they live. Employment opportunities are also fewer in rural areas than in towns and cities. These challenges are reflected in Anne-Marie’s work, both in the images of young people and where she has outlined some of the rough edges of this most beautiful of places.

Someone once told me that their job here was “keeping young people in the dale”. I knew what they meant, but it didn’t sound quite right. Afterall young people have moved away from remote rural areas because they are driven by their very youth to seek out new things, have new experiences, to broaden their horizons (mentally, if not geographically). Some will stay, some will go, but I hope that in the future they will all look back and say: “It was hard sometimes, but I grew up in this amazing place - the North Pennines”.

Image: 9 participants of the UTASS Monday night youth club in front of an aerial photograph of Teesdale.

HAY BAILS

The Rugged Archivea looK Into the places

The Rugged Places is a collection about people and spaces, more importantly about the various representations of space.The etymology of place signifies not just a location but the idea of ‘spot’, to locate something in space whereas the etymology of space is understood as comprising both time and space; from the French espace ‘an area, extent, expanse, lapse of time’.

“Space isn’t remote at all. It’s only an hour’s drive away if your car could go straight upwards” (Sir Fred Hoyle, “London Observer”, 1979).

Anne-Marie Atkinson has taken a similar journey to develop The Rugged Places. By presenting a series of photographs of young people growing up, this collection

particularly hints at the idea of space both figuratively and literally. Much like the remote teenagers in the North Pennines who are in a state of transition, her collection is forever in a state of suspension waiting to be completed. However, one is intrigued at the possibility that Atkinson perhaps never intends this project to be ‘complete’. It is about documenting this place within the complexities of space as understood in its root sense.

But where is this space? And what does Atkinson tell us through unravelling these images within such a space?

Talking about the photographic image and archival systems, Allan Sekula says “the camera is integrated into a larger ensemble:

a bureaucratic-clerical-statistical system of ‘intelligence’. This system can be described as a sophisticated form of archive. The central artefact of this system is not the camera but the filing cabinet”. He continues on to affirm that “in structural terms, the archive is both an abstract paradigmatic entity and a concrete institution. In both senses, the archive is a vast substitution set, providing for a relation of general equivalence between images’. The idea of ‘exchangeable images’ and a substitution set communication between each other becomes crucial to Atkinson’s project as she lays in front of you a series of images that are speaking, telling a story not just to you but to each other as well.

Contemporary documentary photography invariably falls into the category of archival technologies. However, by its very nature of being contemporary and archival at the same time, it presents to us a paradox. For an archive has hitherto remained as something past, and contemporary as the present.

This brings me to curiously explore The Rugged Places even deeper not just as a conceptual paradox but a real problematic. That is indeed a conscious effort on the artists’ part to probe between what the eye usually sees. Lost between spaces and places, these images for lack of a better word conjure up the ‘hysterical symptom’ as put forward by the Atlas Group Archive Files from the Review of Photographic Memory where the

product becomes “not any one person’s actual memories but on cultural fantasies spun from the material of collective memories”.

The Rugged Places are doing exactly this, not handing over material to be judged but enabling one to produce material collectively. The exhibition at White Cloth Gallery invites one to look at multiple sources of image display, from photographic prints and a video made by the artist’s rural-dwelling sister, to the multilayered projection shown on the launch night - a collective effort toform collective memory on a paradox that is neither past nor present but is striving to assert itself and asks for a moment of your time to unravel its intricacies.

References:

Sekula, A, 1986. The Body and The Archive. October, Winter/39, 3-64

Ra’ad, W, 2004. Excerpts from an Interview with the Atlas Group.

Review of Photographic Memory, 44-5

The archival inventory ofThe Rugged Places

is revealed to formThe Rugged Archive

BhavanI esapathI

The authors would like to thank their friends and family for their support throughout the project. Additional thanks to Bruce Davies, Annie Nelson, Lucy Glover and Kate & Steve for making the presentation possible.

Anne-Marie Atkinson extends thanks to James Percy, Jen Smirthwaite and UTASS, Tina Raynor and Killhope Museum, as well as Mom, James, Danni and Cheryl. A special thank you to all of the young people, for keeping me on my toes.

Supported by the IdeasTap Innovators Fund and Divided We Fall.

My aspirations for the future are to help out on farms, and to be a famous singer and visit LA and New York. It feels quite free really, ‘cause we’ve got all this and in a city you only have a house and a job. The bad thing about this area is there is not a lollipop lady and in the park the rock is dangerous. It is quiet, everyone knows eachother, but you can do what you want without being caught! 20 minutes drive from a pint of milk! I wouldn’t feel as safe and confident in an urban area. I want to keep living in a rural area, but maybe not as rural because there are less job opportunities. It’s small, quiet, friendly, safe... Its too far from everything else. I don’t get to socialise much apart from UTASS so I sometimes get bored, but I wouldn’t consider living in an urban area, I wouldn’t like it. I like having lots of space and wildlife around me. It’s good not being in the stinking air of towns and not being amoungst chavs. You can’t get anywhere without a car, it would be easier to see my friends if I didnt rely on parents for transport. If I lived in a city, I would be a cool kind of guy. I can’t go to the college I want to because I can’t get to it. Its the kind of place you can go out and leave your door unlocked.

These images were shot between April and September 2012. The text opposite is a composition of quotes gathered while working on site. The project was exhibited at White Cloth Gallery in March 2013.

Design by James Wright - James.Wright.Design@gmail.com

The Rugged Places The Rugged ArchiveAnne-MArie Atkinson BhAvAni esApAthi