These mysterious historic slides came to me by chance and prompted an experimental reworking. The decomposition suggests entry points to other forms of vulnerability, fragility and resistance. Intrigued by the ‘1830’ sash on the image of the mannequin, I discovered it was the year of the English Swing Riots when labourers rioted over the introduction of new threshing machines and the loss of their livelihoods. Gathering in their hundreds, The Swing Rioters smashed threshing machines, attacked workhouses and tithe barns. Captain Swing was a name appended to threatening letters sent to intimidate farmers.
By combining analogue with digital processes, it became possible to emphasise material decay as an agent of transformation. Solarisation evokes a ghostly atmosphere to offer a fresh and unsettling engagement with history informed by my ancestral relationship to agriculture workers in south England. Colour toning melds human agency with the soil. Like human memory, the fragility of the material is an embodiment of degradation and distortion.