NAVIGATING LIGHT

Navigating Light is a project exploring ‘light writing’/photography to expose the invisible industry and lives of container shipping and a contemporary working river.

In lockdown 2020/2021 this project was made from the base of a shipping container in Trinity Buoy Wharf (the site of an experimental Lighthouse) and regular visits into the Port of Tilbury. Access to the port and container ship crews via the Port Chaplains illuminated a world of work and questions of value, distance and scale.

Adapting to continued lockdown, covid 19 and the reality of stranded seafarers the project explores the urgency of communication and longing for home and embraces digital and analogue methods of production and communication - from the early photographic techniques of ferrotype to code and materials from steel to salt and sim cards.

Thank you to: Port of Tilbury Chaplaincy team, Queen Victoria Seaman’s Rest, Port of Tilbury, Peter O’Donnell, Museum of London, Trinity Buoy Wharf, Rob Fawcett, Essex Laser, LSR Engraving, Subtractor and all the container ship crew met and photographed.

15 x miniature ferrotype portraits were exposed onto cut disc container steel and housed in engraved golden lockets featuring the name, job title, ship name, destination port, home city and co-ordinates of the container ship crew member at the time of making. As part of PORT CITY at the Museum of London these were exhibited in an installation made with container steel, chains, sim cards, mobile phones and a triptych film for mobile phone screen consisting of transcripts of port interviews, marine tracking and documentary images. 5x portrait lockets remain in the Museum of London collections. A locket is travelling to each of the crew members photographed.