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I'm an architectural photographer. I travel around Britain recording and interacting with special places that have a spirit about them. I work from my camper van called Woody and I share my experiences via this digest.
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Tearful lion at All Saints', Harewood in Yorkshire.
"Because the literacy of light and shade is comprehensible by all, regardless of language. Seeing is, literally, believing…"
It was a breakdown that led me to my career in photography. It set me up on a journey which I'm writing about in my book "A Singular Point of Light".
My journey was a quest to find out what it was that helped me overcome my breakdown and ultimately be free of a debilitating depression.
I have to admit that my exploration was partly out of fear of falling back into depression, but also out of curiosity. I needed to understand what aspects had gifted me a new resilience and, once discovered, I felt a profound need to share it with others.
I had always treated the day of my breakdown as ground zero in my creative pilgrimage, but soon discovered that I was picking up a baton that I had dropped many years before.
At times replete with light and structure, with my camera in hand, I’ve felt a completeness that has grafted me into the day, and prolonged its luminosity like a childhood summer.
My recovery had something to do with light and something to do with its interaction with buildings.
REVELATION
I’m stood outside the porch, ready to photograph the rising sun behind a copse in the churchyard at All Saints, Billesley. The morning light has washed the fold of the day, until it strengthens its grip and ignites strange lumps and bumps in the nearby fields revealing the site of a deserted village. As the clouds evaporate, I take a few photographs and feel my confidence rising.
Momentarily, the sun flares out above the haze, and the church becomes the touch-paper to an explosion of colour amongst the swaying tree canopy. Summoned by a blast of light through the porch from the east window, I enter the pocket-sized nave.
Cradled within the south transept are two stone carvings. They are from earlier builds of the church on this site. One carved piece shows the form of a man being chased by an open-mouthed serpent-dragon. The stone was originally part of a twelfth century Romanesque tympanum from over a doorway.
The floor below the tympanum holds a second carving of Romanesque origin. Muddied by the shadows, I can just make out the outline of a pattern. Later on in the day, when the sun has swung to the west, the lump of stone takes on a completely different aspect, and I sit for an hour and watch its story unfold.
"Later on in the day, when the sun has swung to the west, the lump of stone takes on a completely different aspect, and I sit for an hour and watch its story unfold."
I’ve seen carvings like this in museums where the snaking patterns are sanitised by a single source of artificial light. On the stone at Billesley, the light moving across the surface appears to unlock a textured narrative.
At first the surface looks stagnant and isolated until the light pools along the transept floor. Then, with lime-wash as an unscripted reflector, a harsh light induces an abstract three dimensionality. Its surface is more faceted than textured - a prologue to the story unfolding. Several minutes later, the light moves onto the tip of the stone and a shift in colour and texture takes place.
As the carving softens, a frame emerges from the deepening shadows, outlining the fledgling pattern. With my heart rate slowing and the shifting light now discernible, new chapters unfold. A hollowed out crows face morphs into a heart pierced by a vine tendril; a deepened cavity emerges and becomes central to a cross like that of St. Cuthbert.
And again the slab softens, is metamorphic, with the light revealing and concealing, redeeming and forfeiting sections of stone. Acutely angled, the light enriches the relief and pricks out an etched matrix on top of the interlocking pattern. The stone is no longer dense and unyielding, but particled; a sugared surface with a glinting patina. Like a precious baubled ring, the carving becomes the clawed setting, the movement of light upon it the jewel.
"Like a precious baubled ring, the carving becomes the clawed setting, the movement of light upon it the jewel."
The light waxing leads to stasis, and the wavering of the day invokes a momentary communion with the Romanesque carver. This piece of stone, with the assemblage of skill, time and light has propagated an act of visual magic. The warmth of the sun and its passage over the stone has unravelled the carvers intent: the visual storyboarding of the surface. I have parity with a world that operates upon a different orbit: an elongated time-scale.
"The warmth of the sun and its passage over the stone has unravelled the carvers intent: the visual storyboarding of the surface. I have parity with a world that operates upon a different orbit: an elongated time-scale."
Before this day, the pre-conditions for my appreciation of art had been blurred by my quick-fire existence. Before this day, I might stand for a moment and see the unleavened, hard-tooled stone without really seeing.
Parlour, Piano Nobile and Palazzo Members get to read my book A Singular Point of Light here:
Andy Marshall
Member Powered Photography (MPP) is helping me offer my professional services for free to historic locations in Britain.
I've set up an MPP status page which is updated regularly here:
Andy Marshall
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Avebury, Wiltshire
It was at this place that I was reminded of my revelation at All Saints', Billesley.
I'd come here with my friend Steve Tomlin and I was mesmerised by the raking light upon the building surfaces.
In times when a fact is not a fact and a photograph is not a photograph, I find a need to blur out what others are telling me and connect with the reality of the present moment.
Here at Avebury - the touch paper was re-ignited, and I fell in love with the literacy of light on the buildings surfaces and felt no need to explain the what, why, where, when and who..
"Look at the light raking against the flint work!" I said to Steve.
"Can you see the nail?" he said.
"Oh yeah! How beautiful!"
Inside the church the font was in on the act and, as we buzzed around the inside as innumerable people have done before us, the light kept its steady track and graced the ancient font with its presence, pricking out the details. It was as if the font was alive again - like the stone at Billesley.
The listing says that it is a fine C12 barrel font with bishop holding crozier flanked by dragons and scrolls.
But the light said that it is much more than that.
And it's not just the church - other buildings were imbibed with sarsen and brick.
Even the building in the shadows were stricken with an effervescent glow..
Members can see a wonderful VR of the interior of this C16th dovecote by clicking the box below. Viewable on all devices.
Andy Marshall
And then I saw the C17th Great Barn - just a stroll away from the dovecote,
Whilst stood within the timbers I started to get that Russian doll feeling.
This barn, this great barn, is a structure within a village set within another series of structures that form the henge at Avebury; and the henge at Avebury is part of a larger ritualistic landscape that swallows up Wiltshire that stretches beyond to the Preseli Mountains in Wales.
Members can view part of the henge via VR. Viewable on all devices.
Andy Marshall
It's been a long day and I don't feel like cooking in the van, so Steve takes me to a nearby haunt: the Barge Inn, Honey Street.
The Dover Sole is delicious.
In other news:
Woody had a small scrape with another car. He's currently over having a Spa week over in the capable hands at Inchcape VW repair centre.
Andy Marshall
BBC News
Philip Ball
Photograph: Marian Kuric
Genius Loci Digest: 30 Sep 2022
"If ever there is a testament to a work of art it is when it makes the digital dystopia (and the devices associated with it) evaporate into the ether."
Andy Marshall
Andy Marshall
Andy MarshallAn Evening with Steve Tomlin at Broadwell, Oxfordshire - 11th Nov 2023
Steve is an ecclesiastical historian and helped me on the first Member Powered Photo shoot at St. Peter and St. Paul, Broadwell.
Since then things have blossomed and Steve has spent many hours investigating the standing archaeology of St. Peter and St. Paul.
Steve is to orchestrate an evening at Broadwell church touching upon the remarkable hidden histories behind the church.
I will be there with Woody (who will be open and available for viewing).
It's all in aid of the conservation work at Broadwell.
More information here:
Andy Marshall
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Photographs and words by Andy Marshall (unless otherwise stated). Most photographs are taken with Iphone 14 Pro and DJI Mini 3 Pro.
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