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B+W3 YOU AND THE EMPTY SPACE
A different way to approach a ruin is to think of it as a creative
space, ready for you to shape or use to direct a performance.
Photographer Francesca Woodman worked in such spaces,
using the crumbling ruins of an old building, room or apartment
as a backdrop for her unique self-portraits. Weaving the ruins of
the room into her work, Woodman often included fragments and
furniture in the image – making use of the surroundings rather than
storyboarding a shoot beforehand.
Find a ruined space that you can work in and try to make
yourself visible in the work. It doesn’t have to be based around self-
portraiture, but try to reflect your presence, as this example shows.4 MANAGED RUINS
5 LABYRINTHS
Many of the great landscaped gardens in the UK have ruined
elements that have either been made to look crumbling or have
taken advantage of dilapidation or accidents of nature. The house
at the National Trust’s Nymans in West Sussex is such a place,
where the remains from a catastrophic fire were left, rather than
restored. Nearly 100 years later, the ruined house is part of the
fabric of the landscape.
Look at the work of French photographer Eugène Atget, who
spent time recording the end of century Paris and the gardens
of Versailles, and see if you can capture how the natural world
slowly envelopes the man-made, as in this example.Making order out of chaos drove photographer Josef
Sudek to create his wonderful photographic project
called Labyrinths. Finding, ordering and arranging
things into something more desirable is a tricky but
rewarding challenge. Sudek manipulated domestic
rubbish and detritus into table-top compositions, as
well as ordering rooms crammed full of books and
artefacts that he’d collected over a lifetime.
Think of a domestic space as a ruined place and
try to create visually appealing images out of the
leftovers. In this example I’ve found a ruined school
and arranged what was left and moveable.‘In this project, we’d like you to explore
a ruined place and use it to chronicle
change and transition, but also to
decide whether to tell your story in
a celebratory or cynical manner.’All pictures © Tim Daly62-65_TIM_DALY_171 ER/MB.indd 6362-65_TIM_DALY_171 ER/MB.indd 63 05/11/2014 10:5905/11/2014 10:59