During the ‘Coronavirus lockdown’ I walked many of the paths and tracks around Blackpool.
Blackpool is on the Fylde coast and is known for its Golden Mile and seaside frivolity. However, there is evidence of human habitation going back 12,000 years to the Palaeolithic period, and there have been finds of Neolithic stone axes, coracles and wooden causeways around Pilling. Remains of an ancient road from Nateby to Stanah and an Iron Age Romano / British Settlement at Bourne Hill.
Travelling from Nateby across the Fylde to Blackpool in Neolithic times required a wooden causeway. Only a few hundred years ago Lancaster, Preston, Ribchester, Manchester or York would have been remote.
Now it is possible to have a Zoom conference call featuring people in New York and Sydney. Modern technology has altered our perception of remote. By walking some ‘Golden Miles’ I aimed to reconsider and experience the hinterland topography of Blackpool as an area that once made the town remote.
https://henryiddon.com/Golden-Miles-Blackpool-s-Hinterland
Henry Iddon’s photographic and lens-based practice concerns finding new ways, and reasons, to look at landscape / place and how people interact with it. While remaining accessible to all, and relevant to the discourse that is contemporary art and culture, he aims to produce work that is multilayered and that can educate and inform audiences. His lens-based work has been mediated and disseminated through traditional wall hung exhibitions, installations and workshops, book works, newsprint publications, online and through film screenings in the UK and internationally including major festivals.