This work was part of my Photography 2 Landscape unit. I have placed this entry into my Photography 3.1 blog for several reasons.

Although this one of my favourite pieces, my assessors picked me up on some of my decision making. How had I made creative choices? How had I explained my thought process? The why of my work was missing.

At the time I was annoyed at this but thinking back, this has been a helpful experience for me.

This work that deals with memory, the past and the dead so there is a crossover with my current project. I do not know if I would revisit the idea below and explore it in different ways but it is interesting to me and there are perhaps possibilities here, if not in this unit then further into the future.

In this work, I explored a physical journey taken by an ancestor from his home near to Edinburgh to joining the cavalry and travelling as part of the army fighting in the Crimean War in the 1850s. I explore his journey through life and end my work thinking of his return via hospitals in modern day Istanbul back to Edinburgh and his final journey home to be buried in an unmarked grave.

Bartholomew Heron was born in Dalkeith in 1831. Trained as a baker before joining the army in 1850. Fought in the Crimean War in 1854 and 1855 where his regiment took part in the Charge of the Light Brigade. At this time Bartholomew was in hospital in Scutari. He was shipped home and died in hospital in Edinburgh in 1858 when he was aged 27. This is almost all that is known of Bartholomew. There are no images of him, precious few historical details and no grave.

I can only imagine his thoughts lying in a hospital bed hearing of the deaths of so many of his friends and comrades and this at its heart is my inspiration for this piece of work. I can never know his thoughts. I can only imagine this through our shared humanity. This use of imagination to try and get inside another person’s head is a key component of this project and my work in Photography 3. To attempt to question how a life might be represented, how a person might have thought of themselves and how a person might be reborn and given fresh impetus through the creation of a new story through my work.

My work in this project on Bartholomew uses collected artifacts including cavalry jacket, Florence Nightingale’s cap (yes a real one I found at Lothian Health Service Archive and photographed), medals, broken sword, sandcastles along with documents and photographs collected together in baker’s trays.

Bartholomew’s Journey, 2019