Stocksfield Rephotographed - Introduction
This is a long term project to rephotograph various sites in and around the village of Stocksfield that feature in old photographs. The local community maintains a small, eclectic, archive of images, some old photographs, others picture postcards, ranging from the 1890s to the 1980s. A variety of further images are available from a number of other different sources. I am seeking to rephotograph as many of these scenes as possible in order to identify the changes that have taken place over the years, both physical, and in some cases, social (the change from agricultural to affluent residential, changes in land use and access). There are difficulties in that some of the locations of the original photographs are not easily identifiable; some are, for a number of reasons, inaccessible.
My primary approach is simply to pair the old photographs with contemporary ones. In addition I am also experimenting with composite images in which both the old and new photographs are layered upon each other, in a number of different ways, so that both are visible within the same frame. The contemporary images have “ghosts” of the old photographs within them.This approach allows me to explore the concept of Hauntology, (which is concerned with the idea that the present is affected by, “haunted” by, spectres of the Past and that those traces of the Past, although they no longer exist, are nevertheless given a virtual presence in the Present), and how it relates to photography. The intention is that the photographs, both old and new, viewed together will give some sense of the passage of time, and how the past still affects and leaves traces in the present.
The images that follow are a work in progress and will be added to as more photographs are taken. They are organised more or less thematically and by reference to specific locations or areas.
Impossible Photography
Within this theoretical framework there is a particular idea that I would like to look at a little more closely. This is something that has been called “impossible photography”. This relates to the rephotographing of places in old photographs that no longer exist, can no longer be located with any confidence, or that simply can no longer be seen. There is, it might be said, at work here a double haunting: Hamlet’s father is dead, his ghost is till abroad, but cannot now be seen. Working on this project has thrown up a number of such places and has presented a challenge to work out how such places can now be pictured in contemporary photographs. Whilst there is some overlap with the other areas/categories within this project, I have collected together under this separate heading a number of series of images that deal with this situation. In some ways these more than any others most clearly demonstrate the hauntological nature of photographs: it is only by way of photography that these places can still be seen, can still have a virtual existence in the Present notwithstanding that they might no longer exist at all. It is these that more clearly give an indication of how certain aspects of the village have changed over time.
On-line virtual exhibition
Some elements of the Impossible Photography part of the project can also be viewed in a 3D on-line virtual exhibition at: https://artspaces.kunstmatrix.com/en/exhibition/9053452/stocksfield-rephotographed-exercise-impossible-photography
Copyright notice - Important
It has not been possible to establish the original copyright holder for many of the original images that form the basis of this project as they have been published online previously, in some cases on various different websites, and are unattributed. Some that I have used appear on a Facebook page that forms part of a wider “Stocksfield Matters” Facebook group and, to the extent that copyright in any of them might be owned now by one of the principle contributors to, and administrator of that page, Mr. Tim Hills, I gratefully acknowledge his permission to reproduce them here. I am similarly grateful to Ms. Carrie Page, who owns copies of a significant number of the originals of the photographs and postcards that appear in this collection, for her permission similarly. I am particularly grateful to Northumberland County Archives for their permission to use two images that belong to them.
I am particularly indebted to the Stocksfield Local History who have welcomed me as a member. They have expressed their support for this project and the intention is that it will be shared with its membership, and will form the basis of an illustrated talk in April 2025. They have kindly made their extensive archive of old photographs to me for inclusion in the project, for which I am especially grateful. Where I have used their original images I have marked them "(SLHS)" in the caption, by way of acknowledgement.
If anyone wishes to alert me to any copyrights that they might hold in any of the original images then I will of course be pleased to acknowledge this in a revision to this website, or remove them if they would prefer that they are not used.