Dark Satanic Mills

Setting the Challenge

I was recently inspired by a lecture from a leading British landscape photographer, who described the process of photography as far more than recording a picture. Photography is an art form that requires total immersion in the subject: emotional, physical and technical. If you just rock up and shoot a picture, at best you will usually end up with a record shot. Luck can obviously play a part and timing is hugely important. That said, in order to convey a meaningful message through a picture, it is necessary to understand the subject, or the location, and to be at one with it. This often means waiting for the right light, sometimes after carrying equipment for a few miles, and going back if you are out of luck. If at first you don't succeed, you have at least benefited from gaining knowledge of the subject and the location and this will assist in making the ultimate picture.

The Blog

I have some experience of mills: having been brought up in a small mill town and worked in a mill during my youth. William Blake even said that Jerusalem was built amongst them – in spite of the mills be “dark” and “Satanic.” My purpose, therefore, is to convey a profound attachment through pictures that expresses their importance in our heritage. Life moves on and things change, but there is much that we can learn from our past. The history of mills is perhaps chequered: starting with the use of slave labour, then evolving through the industrial revolution when some philanthropic owners demonstrated a responsibility and care for their workforce that seems unparalleled. Now, in the modern era of globalisation, we have moved production abroad to chase the cheapest labour, often to countries that use older production methods, which pollute the planet. We then buy goods made from components that have been shipped around the globe – yet again increasing pollution. This culminates in fewer jobs at home, and an unemployed workforce being paid state benefits. Some of them are even accused of scrounging and are expected to find work that no longer exists.

Rather a lot, then, to express in pictures, and here are some of my attempts:

The first two pictures feature the New Lanark Mills – now a world heritage site in Lanarkshire, Scotland. New Lanark was founded as a cotton spinning village in the late eighteenth century. David Dale built them and provided housing for the workers, Richard Arkwright applied his knowledge to harness the water power of the River Clyde, then Dale's son-in-law, Robert Owen, greatly improved facilities and services for the workers and their families: including a progressive education, factory reform, and more humane working practices and garden cities.

This shows the fine buildings (comprising factories and housing) in their beautiful location and the scene exudes the humanity and progressive socialism of Robert Owen.

The second picture of an antique water turbine – now standing at the rear of the mills – is rather darker and more earthy, consistent with the heat of the mills and physical labour.

For the next series of pictures I have returned to Lancashire, close to the former mill town of Burnley. Regrettably this is not a world heritage site and the buildings are not so grand. One has been renovated, with another to follow.

These pictures feature three mills by the canal in Brierfield, the former home of Smith and Nephew textiles. The first picture shows mill units by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. The units are occupied by various small businesses and most of the picture shows the surrounding area and the canal that passes the mills and is now used for leisure craft. There is 'convergence' in this picture, suggesting a leaning chimney because of the proximity of the shooting position and a hole near the bottom of the chimney is also noticeable. The tonal shades of the picture and the reflection of clouds in the canal suggest passing by ... paying scant regard to our industrial heritage while relaxing on the canal.

Next we move to a picture that suggests dark satanic mills, despite the pleasing lines of the passing canal and its tow-path and the overhanging trees.

All is not lost. There are ambitious plans for development of the mills and one of the units has been converted to flats. I have called this next picture Renovation, in an attempt to show this.

The final picture portrays the Industrial Landscape, with the mills, under a cloudy sky, taking up most of the image; a pleasure barge on the passing canal; and the frame of the nearby gas holder on the horizon.

Pictures can evoke emotions and a reasoned response. There is Blake's aspiration of not ceasing from mental fight until we have built Jerusalem; our ingenuity, shown in the ability to move on and rebuild, by sympathetically adapting the architecture of ancient mills to modern needs; and the conflicting merits of free-market economics, where greed often trumps any humane values in what we sometimes laughingly call civilisation. I have tried to convey these responses in art form.

You can view my picture galleries by visiting my Website