Heritage Photography Spring 2017

HERITAGE PHOTOGRAPHY Journal of the Archaeology & Heritage Group SPRING 2017

Chairman’s Letter ARCHAEOLOGY & HERITAGE GROUP COMMITTEE Chairman Chelín Miller ARPS 49 Stephens Road Tunbridge Wells Kent TN4 9JD heritageweb@rps.org Secretary Rodney Thring LRPS 27 College Road Camberley Surrey GU15 4JP rodney.thring@btinternet.com Treasurer Jim Tonks ARPS Earlton 174 Chairborough Road High Wycombe Bucks HP12 3HW francistonks@hotmail.com Committee Members R. Keith Evans FRPS Eric Houlder LRPS Ken Keen FRPS Dr Mike Sasse Garry Bisshopp ARPS Walter Brooks Published by the Archaeology and Heritage Group of the Royal Photographic Society April 2017 ISSN 0-904495-00-0 Copyright in all text and photographs is held by the credited authors, or as otherwise stated. No part of this publication may be reproducd, transmitted or stored in any form without prior written permission of the Publisher.

Editorial Board Chelin Miller & Eric Houlder Cover photo “Tate Gallery, Basement Steps”

by Maurilio Teso ARPS

I

n this issue of Heritage Photography we have a varied range of articles, reflecting that the A&H Group attracts people with different interests, making it a rich and varied combination of photography. From the dwellings of Arizona’s native communities, to the elegant design of the Tate staircase in London and elaborate architecture of one of England’s most precious cathedrals; from South America’s wild pampas to Geneva’s industrial and scientific machinery; from Spitfire war-heroes to big personalities in the archaeology world. I hope that you will find here something that interests you, and perhaps discover a new subject that you hadn’t considered before.

I always wonder what is it about photography that makes me happy? Is it acquiring new gear, visiting a special place, capturing something that nobody else has seen? Photography

How I took the cover photo

By Maurilio Teso ARPS

A

rchitect Sidney Smith’s Tate Gallery, on London’s Millbank, was opened in 1897; its porticoed entrance and temple-like dome give it an important place in our architectural heritage. Now its newly-built stairs and hallway are, I believe, one of the most successful recent blends of new and old architecture, well worth seeing and photographing.

I took my Olympus E-M1 fitted with 12/40 PRO lens and I found that was the correct choice for that particular project. One could argue that a wider angle lens would also be useful. Tripods are not permitted.

has evolved to an extent that would have seemed unimaginable not long ago. Today we have the ability to take photos with old-fashioned cameras, as well as the latest mobile phones; we can choose to develop our own film or instantly look at our digital files on a screen - as small or as big as we wish…

So, what is it about photography that makes me happy? It is a combination of factors: choosing the tools I am going to use, selecting the subject – sometimes allowing serendipity to happen – trying various processes, sharing the images. But at the centre of this experience is the interaction with others, whether they are telling me their stories or whether I am trying to capture a bit of their essence.

Connecting, reaching out, sharing.

That’s what makes me happy.

What is it about photography that makes you happy?

Fortunately my camera has a very good image stabilising system. At the top of the building is a large skylight, allowing bright light through.

At the top of the stairs there are some sculptures. One is a forged iron figure called “Woman” donated by the artist Reg Buttler in 1949. You can also view the whole of the stairs and landing from the restaurant above, though it is necessary to be a member to go inside.

Nearly everybody there was taking pictures, using cameras as well as phones. Despite the big crowd, it was not too difficult to take photographs.

I feel that a new development like this helps inspire photographers to be creative and imaginative.

Heritage Photography Heritage Photography is published by the RPS Archaeology & Heritage Group twice a year: Spring and Autumn (contribution deadlines are 1st March and 1st September, respectively). All contributions should be submitted to the Editor. Items covering any aspect of archaeology and heritage photography are welcome, including inspirational stories, technique, reviews of equipment, exhibitions, books, etc. Copy should be sent as .txt or .doc files by email. Digital images (portrait or landscape orientation) should be supplied by email or through a file sharing platform (such as Dropbox, wetransfer or similar) or CD rom. Please rename your photos: YournameSurname_PHOTONAME, CMYK or sRGB colour mode, high resolution (300dpi) jpgs or tifs, file size approx 6MB. For more information, please contact the Editor at heritageweb@rps.org.

2

Spring 2017

Heritage treasures of Arizona’s Great Plateau The one-time dwellings of North America’s native communities, and the artefacts found there, still provide a rich trove for historians, archaeologists and photographers.

Some of the most dramatic are those of the historic peoples of present-day Arizona.

Text and pictures by R. K. Evans.

Reconstructed pueblo house, entered by ladders and roof openings.

T

he American south-west was widely populated by ancient peoples, and nowhere is this more evident than in the state of Arizona, where a wealth of prehistoric ruins have survived for ten centuries and more. Best-known perhaps are the cliff dwellings in the Colorado Plateau country of northern Arizona, typified by the White House ruins in Canyon de Chelly photographed, famously, by Timothy O’Sullivan and later Ansel Adams.

Stone houses on the mesas Those cliff dwellings we shall look at in a moment. But there are many remains, too, of the earlier adobe and stone buildings on their hilltop mesas rising above the plateau. One

HERITAGE PHOTOGRAPHY

is the Sinaguan pueblo (village or settlement) at Tuzigoot, dating from the 12th century and in its heyday a century later containing 110 rooms housing around 230 people. Typically they had few doors, and were entered by ladder through hatchways in the roofs.

The Sinagua people – so named by later Spanish invaders as meaning ‘without water’ – arrived here about 1125-1150; they are ancestors of the Hopi, whose earliest settlements date from the 14th century. They were peaceful village dwellers, farming the plateau and the valley bottoms and building their hilltop pueblos, similar to those of the Anasazi tribes further north, from the local limestone and sandstone, roofed with rafters

of juniper, cottonwood and pine.

The Sinagua were also fine artisans, making tools of bone and stone, and fashioning ornaments from shells and turquoise; and they grew cotton with which to weave their fabric clothing.

Yet around 1425 the settlement was abandoned – possibly due to over-farming, drought or, as some historians believe, conflict with the neighbouring and more warlike Yavapai tribe. Today the ruined walls of the Tuzigoot pueblo and its watchtower remain prominent on their limestone ridge 150ft above the plateau; representative artefacts found there – jewellery, textiles, tools and pottery, baskets and religious totems – are displayed in a nearby visitor centre.

3

This view of Mummy Cave reveals a glimpse of the 55 houses in the right-hand, eastern, cavern. A further 20 were hidden in that to the west of the tower house.

Montezuma Castle, five storeys high and dating from the 12th century. The valley of Beaver Creek is 100ft below.

An authentic reproduction of a 17th century pottery bowl, made and decorated by a Navajo craftswoman in the tribal reservation near Kayenta. The flute player is Kokopeli, the rainmaker.

4

Spring 2017

130 miles to the north is a smaller but originally similar building, the Anasazi pueblo of Tusayan near the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Dating from about 1185 and part-restored in the 1930s, this had a kiva (meeting place), granary and rooms for about 20 people. It too was later abandoned.

After the disappearance of the Anasazi and Sinagua pueblo people, Navajo tribes migrated to the Plateau country from their traditional home on the Great Plains, and close to the Tusayan pueblo is an accurate replica of a Navajo watchtower, built in 1932. That it is almost 7,500ft above sea level part-explains the problems of farming in this inhospitable terrain. But like their predecessors, the Navajo were skilled craftworkers and even today, in homes and workshops on their tribal reservation, they produce fine rugs and blankets, jewellery and copies of traditional decorated pottery.

Cliff dwellings in the canyons For a variety of reasons – climatic change, over-farming, defence from neighbouring tribes – some of those families living on the flatlands of the plateau abandoned their pueblo homes and built houses and settlements in the caves or beneath overhangs of nearby canyon walls.

The Anasazi people around Kayenta, for example, moved to such cliff dwellings in Tsego Canyon around the year 1250; Walnut Canyon, near the town of Flagstaff, was home to them and the Sinagua, hunting and farming, from around 1100. Here a cluster of 25 cliff dwellings can be reached by a steep trail 200ft down from the canyon rim. Located under natural overhangs in the cliff, their walls were built of limestone bonded with clay. The occupants abandoned the canyon 150 years later, many moving southwest across the Coconino Plateau to our next area of interest, a valley just 20 miles south of that hilltop pueblo of Tuzigoot.

Limestone walls formed 25 individual rooms under this Walnut Canyon overhang.

Here is the remarkable cliff dwelling of Montezuma Castle (so misnamed because its early European discoverers believed it of Aztec origin). Built into a recess in the canyon wall 100ft above Beaver Creek, this is a five-storey, 20-room dwelling dating from the 12th century, and still in good condition. Just downstream of it is ‘Castle A’, now much deteriorated but originally a building of six storeys housing some 45 rooms. Both were built by the Sinagua after they began to abandon their homes in Walnut Canyon. Explored in the 1880s, many of the site’s artefacts, like those from Tuzigoot, can be found in local and national museums.

White House and nearby sites Some of Arizona’s most important cliff dwellings are to be found near its north-eastern border with New Mexico.

Here in Canyon de Chelly and the adjoining Canyon del Muerto, again at an altitude of 6,000 – 7,000ft, are the White House ruins photographed by O’Sullivan and Adams; Antelope House; Ledge Ruin; Tseyaa Kin or ‘house beneath the rock’; and geological features sacred to the early dwellers, such as Spider Rock and Navajo Fortress.

For first the Anasazi and later the Navajo, the canyons’ fertile valley floor and secure location made them ideal for settlement, and some 70 Navajo families still farm here.

Special permission, and a Navajo guide, are required in order to visit most of the cliff dwellings here. Casa Blanca (White House) is accessible by a rugged trail descending 500ft down the canyon wall; it has 60 rooms, and tree-ring dating pinpoints its construction as around 1070-1100.

Ten miles to the east, in Canyon del Muerto, is Tseyaa Kin, inhabited by the early ‘basket maker’ Anasazi from about 350 AD and abandoned in the 13th century. The site is also known as ‘Mummy Cave’ – two well-preserved mummified bodies, one holding a flute, were discovered here in 1880. The eastern cavern has four kivas and 55 rooms, the western 20 rooms, with an external tower house between them.

Slightly smaller, with 55 rooms and of similar date, is Antelope House, so-called for the half-lifesize antelopes painted on a nearby cliff face.

Exploring the area today All of the sites described here can be approached by good roads from the international airport in Phoenix, Arizona but then often require a long walk over rough, steep trails.

Accommodation near the sites is always adequate, and in some cases, as at the south rim of Grand Canyon, can be luxurious. Reservations are advisable in the period from Easter until late September, and be aware that heavy winter and spring snow can restrict access and the facilities available at each site.

HERITAGE PHOTOGRAPHY

5

John Gillespie Magee Jr.

J

Just how high was he when he wrote “High Flight”?

By Shaun Parkes.

ohn Magee is famous for his iconic poem, ‘High Flight’, which eloquently describes the elation and emotion experienced by pilots and aviators.

Magee’s parents were Anglican missionaries working in Shanghai. John Magee Sr. was from a wealthy American family but became an Episcopalian priest. Faith Backhouse was a Briton from Suffolk, and a member of the Church Missionary Society. They married in 1921; John Jr., the eldest of four boys, was born on 9 June 1922. John Jr. began his education at the American School in Nanking; in 1931 his mother brought him to the UK, studying at a boarding school in Kent for 4 years before attending Rugby School from 1935-1939. A former pupil who had a great effect on young Magee was the famous WWI poet, Rupert Brooke. In 1938, Magee won the school’s prize for poetry, which Brooke had won in 1905. Magee’s winning poem referred to Brooke’s death in 1915.

In 1939, as Magee visited the USA, Germany invaded Poland, initiating WW2. Magee was unable to return to Rugby to complete his schooling, attending school in Connecticut instead, winning a scholarship to Yale. However, Magee’s time at Rugby had obviously affected him deeply, and instead of going to Yale, Magee entered

Canada illegally to enlist in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) in October 1940. Magee completed flight training in Canada before being sent to No. 53 Operational Training Unit at RAF Llandow in Wales, where he qualified on Spitfires. Magee’s instructor commented that he had ‘patches of brilliance, (a) tendency to overconfidence’. Magee was posted to 412 (Fighter) Squadron RCAF at RAF Digby. The squadron flew air defence missions over the UK, and fighter sweeps into occupied Europe. Magee was quartered in a house at Wellingore; two men who later became very famous lived there at the time: Guy Gibson, to become Officer Commanding 617 (Dambusters) Squadron, and fighter ace Douglas Bader.

In August 1941 Magee flew a Spitfire on a high-altitude test flight to a height of 33,000 feet, and whilst orbiting in a climb to reach the altitude he recalled verses from a 1938 poem by Cuthbert Hicks, entitled ‘To touch the face of God’; undoubtedly inspired by various pieces of poetry, he completed ‘High Flight’ shortly after landing. He wrote to his parents: “I am enclosing a verse I wrote the other day.

It started at 30,000 feet, and was finished soon after I landed.

I thought it might interest you”. On the back of the letter he penned the lines of ‘High Flight’.

It was in a Spitfire similar to this that John Magee lost his life in December 1941.

6

Spring 2017

On 11 December 1941, Magee was flying a Spitfire Mk Vb, serial number AD921 (VZ-H), in a flight of 4 aircraft from RAF Wellingore, a satellite station of RAF Digby. At 11:30 hours over the hamlet of Roxholme, in cloud, Magee’s aircraft collided with an Airspeed Oxford trainer from Cranwell; his aircraft was too close to the ground for the parachute to deploy and Magee was killed instantly.

The RAF wrote to Magee’s parents; part of the letter read: “Your son’s funeral took place at Scopwick Cemetery, near Digby Aerodrome, at 2.30pm, on Saturday, 13 December 1941, the service being conducted by Flight Lieutenant S. K. Belton, the Canadian padre of this Station. He was accorded full Service Honours, the coffin being carried by pilots of his own Squadron”.

Engraved on Magee’s headstone are the first and last lines of ‘High Flight’: “Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth ...

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God”.

John Gillespie Magee Jr. was 19 years old when he died.

A medical explanation?

The BBC programme ‘Inside Out’ investigated the writing of ‘High Flight’ with some astounding conclusions. Shortly before writing the poem, Magee experienced oxygen failure in a Spitfire, recording the event in his logbook.

He described experiencing the symptoms of oxygen starvation, hypoxia, before he was able to descend to below 10,000 feet where he could safely breathe atmospheric air.

PO John Gillespie Magee Jr RCAF.

Hypoxia can create various effects: confusion, elation, sometimes spontaneous laughter, or feelings of impending doom. Hypoxia can also affect vision and colour perception, potentially causing a pilot to ‘see’ a different world to normal. The effects can be fatal for a pilot who does not re-establish his oxygen supply.

The programme conducted research to establish whether the theory was credible. Former Red Arrows and Harrier pilot Dave Slow carried out a simulated flight to 25,000 feet without oxygen at RAF Henlow in the RAF Centre of Aviation Medicine (CAM) hypobaric test chamber.

Slow tried to read ‘High Flight’ in the chamber, but struggled. He then attempted a shape-sorting puzzle devised for two-year olds, but couldn’t complete it. Afterwards Slow explained: “Suddenly it all makes sense. ‘High Flight’ means a lot to most pilots. It certainly feels like the way someone in a hypoxic state would see the world… I can see how it would shape your view of flying. It’s an intriguing theory ...”

CAM’s medical experts offer an alternative view. They believe that the poem may have been inspired by a physiological effect of flight. Discovered in the 1950s and officially called ‘The Breakthrough Phenomenon’, commonly known as ‘The Big Hand’, the condition makes pilots have an ‘out of-body’ experience; often the pilot feels that he is above the cockpit looking down at himself. Other effects can include an inexplicable sense of elation. The head of CAM stated that the Breakthrough Phenomenon was “a more likely theory, though you cannot rule out hypoxia”.

Whatever the inspiration, ‘High Flight’ remains an iconic poem which will ensure that John Magee Jr.’s name will not be forgotten for many years to come.

Magee's grave, Holy Cross, Scopwick, Lincs.

HERITAGE PHOTOGRAPHY

About the author Shaun Parkes is 54 years old and lives in Lincolnshire. Married with an adult daughter, he is from an RAF family, is a keen photographer and enjoys reading military history. As ‘third generation RAF’ he holds a Commission in the Training Branch of the RAF Volunteer Reserve, and has been an instructor with the Air Training Corps for over 30 years.

7

Heritage Photography in Geneva

I

Industrial and scientific machinery is an important facet of heritage photography.

Here Robert Galloway LRPS finds some intriguing examples in Switzerland.

n April 2016 I made my first visit to Geneva, a brief visit of only three full days, and I was agreeably surprised at the range of opportunities there for heritage photography. One of my photographic interests is in buildings, and the fact that Geneva has an old town on a hill, as has my home town of Edinburgh, seemed to be promising. Another of my interests is in historical scientific instruments, and Geneva has an excellent History of Science Museum which displays primarily instruments from the 18th and 19th centuries, with an emphasis on optics and electricity: a museum which happily permits photography so long as flash is not used.

As to the photography, the camera used was a Sony SLT a77 (APS-C size sensor, 24MP, steady shot stabilization) with Sony f2.8 16-50mm zoom lens. ISO and aperture were set manually to enable hand held use of the camera with minimum noise, while automatic focus and exposure were used. Images were saved as RAW files and processed in Lightroom as seemed appropriate in each individual case.

A later Wimshurst machine.

From the History of Science Museum To have some unity in topic of images from the History of Science Museum I have selected electrical instruments: the first one is an electrostatic friction machine. The principle of the machine was demonstrated by Otto Guericke (the same as invented the first air pump) about 1660 using friction against a rotating sphere of sulphur; at the beginning of the 18th century Francis Hawksbee (instrument maker to the Royal Society, London) showed that the sulphur sphere could be replaced by a glass sphere; then by mid-18th century functional advantages had been demonstrated by replacing the rotating glass sphere by a glass cylinder or a glass disc. There follows an example of James Wimshurst’s well-known electrostatic machine first devised c.1880, and then two electro-magnetic machines.

Dynamo, 19th century.

Electrostatic friction machine.

8

Batiment des Forces Motrices This is an eye-catching building in the middle of the river Rhone, built during the early 1880s to house machinery to extract water from the river, and to use the power of the flow of the river to pump the water through distribution pipes around Geneva. The distribution provided drinking water and also water at high pressure to drive facto-

Spring 2017

Batiment des Forces Motrices.

ry machinery. Shortly afterwards water from the high pressure supply was used to drive electric generators for a public electricity supply system. Operations ended around 1980 and in 1996 an opera house to seat 985 was built in wood within the major part of the building. A part of the original pumping machinery (1885) is preserved.

Carved heads, c.1334

The interior quadrangle of the Hotel de Ville.

HERITAGE PHOTOGRAPHY

The Old Town The old town has narrow streets climbing the hill topped by the Cathedral. The photographs shown as illustrative of this area are of the Hotel de Ville, with its fine arched quadrangle, and the carved heads from Maison Tavel.

Preserved pumping machinery dated 1885.

Hotel de Ville.

9

Past People Portraits

T

Editorial Board member Eric Houlder LRPS details the techniques, both film and digital, he has devised to make characterful portraits of some of Britain’s leading archaeologists.

he stimulus which began this quest: a request for a portrait of a recently deceased archaeologist whom I worked with in the 1960s. It is now time to expand upon the progress of what initially was a sideline to my recording of archaeological sites under excavation.

I must emphasise here my original attitude to portraiture; namely that it was an extravagant use of costly film which could be better utilised on the archaeology in front of me.

However, as I get older – 76 and counting! – I do appreciate that not all the colleagues whom I have worked with have been adequately portrayed by photographic or even artistic contemporaries.

To begin with, I mined my slide files, and tried, with little success, to scan and crop pictures that were not originally intended as portraits. One or two of these images were reasonable, but most were not up to the quality of later pictures taken deliberately to capture the features of archaeologists. Nearly all of these latter were shot handheld at conferences or lectures.

Ensuring a sharp image After several years, a technique evolved which Group colleagues may find useful. I set the white balance to auto, and I also set the ISO to auto, and select a shutter speed (in shutter priority mode) which I know will result in a sharp image utilising the anti-shake mechanism in the lens, usually 1/125th second. For some reason the electronic brain in the camera always then selects a wide aperture to accompany this shutter speed, and with a medium telephoto lens of about 90mm equivalent, I always get a blurred background. The recent examples accompanying this brief article should enable the reader to judge the success (or otherwise!) of this technique, whilst the “historic” images will, perhaps, show what is possible by selectively cropping much older film images.

There is always an element of luck in acquiring such pictures; in having a camera to hand at the right time, for example. Indeed, I acknowledge my luck in being reasonably close to the Council for British Archaeology HQ in York, and being involved with that organisation since before its re-location from London.

10

However, there have been missed opportunities too, like the time when Beatrice de Cardi herself attended a symposium without prior notice. I did not have a camera with me, being obsessed with my duties as projectionist, which in those days necessitated bringing a bag full of Carousel trays, with no room for a camera too. Nowadays, I always carry a camera to archaeological conferences, the duties of projectionist being, thankfully, made redundant by the wonders of PowerPoint, and by my recent elevation to a Trustee of CBA(Y). This project is on-going, so expect to see more people pictures in due course.

The late Don Brothwell (below left) was a young palaeontological osteologist at the Natural History Museum when he exposed the Piltdown Man as a deliberate forgery, creating headlines in all the newspapers and becoming instantly famous. He later moved to the University of York, where he was working when this image was taken many years ago. Image scanned and cropped from a larger group on colour negative film, and processed in Affinity Photo.

Minolta X500, 35-70 mm lens.

Gill Bull (below right), the new Deputy Director of the CBA, shot as discussed above. Processed in Affinity Photo. Lumix DMC G1, 45-200mm lens.

Professor Colin Hazelgrove (below) of Leicester University, taken indoors, using the technique outlined above. Processed in Affinity Photo. Lumix DMC G1, 45-200mm lens.

Dr Steve Sherlock (above left) discoverer and excavator of the famous Saxon Princess grave. This image taken in a poorly-lit lecture theatre using the above mentioned technique. Processed in Affinity Photo. Lumix DMC G1, 45200mm lens.

Sir Tony Robinson (above right), recently knighted, who presented Time Team and many other archaeology television programmes. A deliberately shot outdoor portrait using a long lens actually during filming. Luckily, Sir Tony turned and looked straight at me whilst I was shooting him. Scanned from a Fujichrome transparency, and processed in Serif PhotoPlus X6. Minolta X500, Sigma 75300mm lens.

Spring 2017

Changing Traditions

Chelin Miller ARPS explores adaptation to globalisation in Argentina.

I

Gaucho Nonna, dressed in traditional poncho and wide-brimmed hat.

n the final project for my MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the University of the Arts London (UAL) I explored the effects of globalisation through the relationship between man and land; the global and the personal, past and present. The reach of world economic and environmental trends has a big impact on our daily lives.

For centuries since the conquest of South America, Gauchos have roamed the Argentine pampas. Brave and patriotic, living simply off the land, working on cattle ranches and moving freely as nomads with ‘no master and no god’.

Cattle ranching is an essential part of the Argentine economy, deeply ingrained in the culture. But now gauchos have become an endangered species, a vanishing culture, in a world where economic reality impinges on even the most carefully tended national myth. It was this culture that I hoped to see and record.

Farming practices have been changing massively in Argentina. Land that used to be destined for cattle ranching is now used to grow soya, one of the main agricultural exports. In a decade, cattle ranching went out of fashion.

Tourism and the Heritage industry Farming and agricultural practices are not the only sources of income in a country with such a vast rural area. On one hand there has been a decline in traditional agricultural methods, but a new aspect has arisen, the growth in Tradition and Heritage Tourism, an industry that idealises and romanticises the past. According to renowned author Rebecca Solnit, the past can be an odd product, too un-

HERITAGE PHOTOGRAPHY

known and unpleasant. What the tourism industry provides is a version of selected aspects. Nothing is produced, but opportunities to consume. It is the perfect industry for the information age: one of leisure, consumption displacement, simulation. And it feeds the needs of the millennial generation perfectly, providing experiences.

The town of San Antonio de Areco, where I carried out my project, is busiest at weekends, when day-trippers from the capital, Buenos Aires, turn up to restaurants, rural festivals and weekend get-aways to sample some of that country life-style. Sometimes it is hard to say to what extent the past has been reinvented. Tourism can encourage the preservation of a place, but frequently tourists inadvertently stimulate an industry at the cost of the local culture. Cultures, after all, evolve and change but tourists most often want an unchanged vision of the past. Ponchos, whips and horse-riding boots are offered as objects to cherish, fashion items and souvenirs. Do these items have the same meaning when made for the tourist market as when they are made and used by the local people?

They look the same, but they are part of a market economy, not a subsistence economy, and they have lost their authenticity.

But in San Antonio de Areco there are still plenty of local people who continue with traditions because it is truly their way of life and it is ingrained in their identity, not simply to feed the tourism industry. For me, born in Argentina, it was a true pleasure to meet and spend time with them, trying to understand their perception of globalisation and adaptation to the modern world.

11

Group outing to Ely Cathedral

T

By Garry Bisshopp ARPS

he Group’s first ecclesiastical field trip this year was a visit to The Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity at Ely on 5 April, arranged by our long-standing member Ken Keen. Ten members took part, some arriving early in the day whilst the cathedral was relatively calm.

Ely was founded as a monastery in 673AD by Etheldreda, wife of a Northumbrian king, and the order lasted about 200 years until destroyed in a Danish raid. It was re-founded as a Benedictine community in 970. The present building is a mix of Romanesque and Norman and dates from 1081. The Monastic church became a Cathedral in the

The south aisle; note the Victorian warm-air stove.

12th century and since then has had many additions and alterations. The last major change was the Great Restoration which was completed in 2000.

It was interesting to see that the Victorian Gurney Warm Air Stoves are still in use in the nave aisles. The light levels and hence dynamic range varied greatly throughout the Cathedral due to the relatively low spring sun, and the high-set windows in the clerestory and lantern. This left the lower part of the choir and nave quite dark. Bracketing and long exposures were needed with appropriate

post processing, a subject covered in the Autumn 2016 issue of Heritage Photography.

We were fortunate to be able to view a photographic exhibition ‘The English Cathedral’ by the late Peter Marlow, which was on display in the Lady Chapel. The photographs captured all 42 English Cathedrals and were taken from the same position, looking east towards the altar as the dawn light lit the main east window. In all it was a successful and enjoyable day out, meeting Group members and indulging in photography.

Printed by Lakeside Printing Ltd. Tonbridge, Kent