A Land's Memory

Every land has a history by definition, which might be known or unknown to a stranger who chances to pass through it. I recently discovered, in a land which was totally unknown to me, that it’s soil, the trees it harbours, the torrents it welcomes, or the passing glance of an inhabitant, are all living witnesses to memory. To a visitor’s mind, short of historical knowledge of the area as mine was, they proved an incredible spring-board for sensorial memory (moving and informing me, as much as any recounted tale, or despatch, or photograph which I might have read about once I returned home). In these ten photographs, ‘A Land’s Memory’, which I took with my IPhone in the countryside around the city of Udine in northeastern Italy, I tried in the most informal way possible to capture this preserved, natural energy of memory. Without knowing why or how, I could not help but feel the screaming tragedy of past invasions, massacres and war which echoed in these lands. It may well be that a return visit in the future will leave me cold, unknowing, without access, but for however brief or impressionable my first visit was, the Land had invited me to share it’s memory.