The intention when making this series was to create immersive images that were both topographic and imbued with cultural and historical values: I wanted to suggest the ineffable, that something about an object or place that gives it resonance. Layered within black and white landscape images, were images that had been encoded with episodic memories.

The landscape images had been taken over a period of twenty years and show the diverse physical aspects of the island. The encoded images, taken over a similar time scale, were made from photographs showing some aspect of social or working life on the island. For example source material might be an image of a working sheep shearer in a blue vest, the first prize display for carrots and beetroot at the annual show or a young and skinny man, ‘malinky long legs’, stacking in the woodshed.

When making the series of filters with which the ‘memory photographs’ were encoded, I wanted to create something that would reflect (a) the local colours and (b) evoke noise, a scratchy sound, something akin to wave interference on a cold cathode television set. By chance, some of the outputs resembled tartans and tweeds.

The appearance of these ‘chances’ typify my working process: I might start with a particular landscape and layer it with a selection of memories, intuitively varying the density of each image, regularly tweaking and often retiring a ‘memory photograph’, and sometimes replacing the landscape. I found that digression was an invaluable tool in escaping ‘conscious control’. I am never entirely sure how the image will turn out.