Pentagonal Pool

Pentagonal Pool Mike Chisholm

Pentagonal

Pool

Mike Chisholm The human understanding is no dry light, but receives infusion from the will and affections; whence proceed sciences which may be called 'sciences as one would'. For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes...

Numberless in short are the ways, and sometimes imperceptible, in which the affections colour and infect the understanding.

Francis Bacon, Novum Organum

All images © 2006 & 2020 Mike Chisholm Revised and expanded edition 2020 email: chisholm.m.i@gmail.com

The Highfield Campus of Southampton University is where I used to work. Through it — barely noticed, I imagine, by most of the staff and students who cross it daily — runs a stream, which predates the university and forms the centre of gravity of the campus landscaping done in the 1960s. During most lunch breaks I would walk part or all of the 400m length of this stream, which took about 40 minutes. My primary objective was to take photographs, but I also listened, observed, and generally tried to be open to what was there.

This stream has two personalities: a formal landscaped channel, modelled in the sixties to flow through the heart of the new campus, and the remnant of the original “natural” channel. The transition between them is marked by a weirpool, pentagonal in shape and about 25 square metres in area, where the stream reappears from a conduit which takes it underneath a nearby building. The level of water in the pool and its strength of flow depend on the time of year, and the recent weather. Large quantities of natural and other debris can build up over the year, and an “island” of leaves, twigs and weed emerges as the water level falls, which is periodically dredged out.

The decades I worked on that campus were the proverbial Interesting Times for British universities. In the 1960s and 70s pressure for change came from below, from students, which the universities more or less absorbed. From the 1980s, however, pressure for change came from above, from government, and resulted in permanent revolution.

Inevitably, the very nature and purpose of higher education came under scrutiny (some would say under threat), and this climate of turbulence and self-examination formed the background to my solitary lunchtime walks along a neglected stream running through the heart of one British university campus. Against this constant flow of change the Pentagonal Pool served as a still point and scrying mirror. I have tried to use the repertoire of visual elements offered by the pool to explore the layered “same differences” that long familiarity with a single place will reveal.

The photographs in the sequence are all of this single pool, and were made between 1999 and 2005. They were taken at the same time of day (around 12:30 pm), and from one of three possible viewpoints, each roughly ten feet above the water's surface. Part of this work was exhibited in the Hartley Library of the University of Southampton (under the title “Dry Light”, 24 November 2004 – 28 February 2005) and an early version of the sequence was selected by the Southern Arts photographic website Fotonet-South as an online exhibition in 2001. The original edition of this book was self-published under my short-lived Shepherd's Crown imprint in 2006: I have now revisited and revised the sequence, taking advantage of the “layflat” format to show combinations that were previously impractical.

Mike Chisholm, 2020

Pentagonal Pool

Pentagonal Pool

Pentagonal Pool

Pentagonal Pool

Pentagonal Pool

Pentagonal Pool

Pentagonal Pool

Pentagonal Pool

Pentagonal Pool

Pentagonal Pool

Pentagonal Pool

Pentagonal Pool

Pentagonal Pool

Pentagonal Pool

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.

Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning

Nature is often hidden; sometimes overcome; seldom extinguished.

Francis Bacon, Of Nature in Men