Dungeness 1998

Dungeness, UK - elaine - Friday, April 29th, 2005 : goo

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The reason i know about dungeness was because the film maker derek jarman loved it there. his cottage is the middle shot. he died in 1994. i took these photos in 1998. he had made a 'garden' of sorts, which was kind of illegal. this area is a site of special scientific interest because of all the different weird seaweed and other stuff and he was messing with it a bit, and anyway it's the seaside, and he died, and the way of these things is that i don't think it's been maintained, or that it could be, and i'm not sure he even would have wanted it to be. he had a big passion for the apocalyptic post war vision thing, and i think he has influenced me a lot. he made a feature film called jubilee and lots of pop videos for the smiths on super 8, lovely saturated colour. when he got hiv it was before it was possible to live with it, so he died. this was a massive personal shame, clearly, for people who knew and loved him, but on a selfish note, i miss him as an artist and as a cultural character. he used to come here for fish and chips, and one day he bought a hut, way, way before it was expensive or trendy. some of the places here are made of old railway carriages. the whole thing is overlooked by the nuclear power plant. the last shot shows what most of it looks like. when you drive down here it's quite hard to navigate, becuase the notion of 'road' gets a bit vague. he said it was the end of the world and it is, and lovely for it. there is a big army practice place full of squaddies running around in heavy clothes right next to the power plant, right next to RSPB wetlands (royal society for the protection of birds) two lighthouses, a miniature railway and a thousand year old holly forest. and fish and chips

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