James Hankey
My fascination into the St Austell's China Clay Industry started during my regular trips on the A30. I found myself staring for as long as I could (whilst still driving!) at the incredible mountainous silhouettes that seemed to cover an endless area. After enquiring about the St Austell China Clay quarries from a sociological point of view, I began to explore the area on foot. I became absolutely fascinated by the surreal physical attributes of the land that were so well hidden from the roadside. I was intrigued not only by the visual appearance of the mica dams, the slag heaps and the pits, but of the intertwined industrial pathways that inter-link each and (nearly) every one of the sites.
The more times I visited these spaces I began to realise that the process of walking, exploring and using the pathways to get from one site to another was a really important part of the experience. I wanted to translate the physical experience of exploring the landscape and following the industrial pathways on foot, into a two dimensional image. I realised that by using long exposures the camera would be able trace my movements within a certain space.
The wavy light lines are created by simply walking whilst holding a lit torch. The frequency and symmetry of the light line is a direct mapping of the bodies walking motion across the surface of the ground. The flatter the surface of the ground, the easier it is to walk on it and therefore the more symmetrical and regular the light lines will appear. The light lines symmetry could be thought of as having a direct relationship to the regularity of heavy industrial vehicles that have passed over the ground - the vehicles make the ground more compact and therefore easier to walk on.
The bright lines on the floor are created using a high-powered torch simply pointed at the ground next to my feet. I used the torch pointing near my feet to reveal the specific marks and tracks left by industrial vehicles.
These four photographs are selected from lots of images accumulated from many visits to the amazing area.
James Hankey
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