Ian Howorth’s England is a land of the mind made up of small houses with pastel coloured walls, old-fashioned cars and bar interiors tinged with nostalgia by the dying sunlight.
” I often think of my relationship to the images I shot, both the ones that were selected and the ones that were not, and how they each help me understand the place I’m in.
The pink and blue hues just off a Kent high street and the faded-peach tones of a Brightonian hairdressers say so much about who we were and how we did things but also where we are now and where we are headed. Hand-stenciled signage in Great Yarmouth roused me to capture that image – signs like this are representations of a time and a place and everything in between, reminders that these sites once thrived. We pass them often – sometimes daily – and pay them little attention, except when their dilapidation stands in stark contrast to the new.
For me, these relics chronicle my own understanding of place – they have become a sort of roadmap to understand who I am, where I am and what my surroundings mean. I am forever assessing change, updating my knowledge to reinforce my sense of belonging. The urban landscape is borne entirely from our creation and it tells us so much – We plan and build, reap and destroy and repeat the process as we pass through. It’s easy to forget that many of these things still bear the influence of the past – telling us much about ourselves while stuck in time, surviving, struggling and sometimes just about existing. “
— Ian Howorth
Signed copies
