Well, there I was with nothing more than the old Rollei T in my hands and the thought that I really should use him more than I do.
Oly The Rollei has been a friend in my life since the 25th January 2003 (oh the power of keeping notebooks!) when I was pushed into the remembrance (by my brother) that at one time I had been dead serious about photography.
He was alluding to my degree course at Duncan of Jordanstone College Of Art and my friendship (yes I can call it that, and indeed so could all his students) with Joseph Mckenzie (father of modern Scottish Photography - not my quote) or just plain JOE as we called him.
A giant of a character who railed against the mores and attitudes of the narrow-mindedness of the institution that was DOJCA his whole life.
A giant of a character who railed against the mores and attitudes of the narrow-mindedness of the institution that was DOJCA his whole life.
"The Ruby In The Pig's Arsehole" was what he called the Photography Department, and it was true.
No making of little me's by him, no sir - he gave you wings to fly.
No making of little me's by him, no sir - he gave you wings to fly.
Anyway, that's been detailed before.
Suffice to say Oly The Rollei was a sound purchase and has stood me well through hundreds of films.
This is an intereactive post, in that it requires you to click links - if you're OK with that, please proceed!
This is an intereactive post, in that it requires you to click links - if you're OK with that, please proceed!
 |
| Prometheus 6 |
Anyway, enough of technicalities, I've had a thought to do a small photographic portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin for a while.
Who's SHE? I hear you ask.
Well, better known as Mary Shelley, she spent a small portion of her formative years (1812 and again 1813) in Dundee.
"I wrote then—but in a most common-place style. It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered."
If you read the preface to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein she says as much, about her days spent dreaming and observing the 'drear' banks of the Tay.
It was a very different city in those days too; the town expanding exponentially from it's post-medieval port status, to full-on Industrial Centre.
The influence on a young and imaginative mind must have been immense.
She could draw from the sites of witch burnings; plague pits; haunted lanes; a smelly and bloody whaling industry; mills; smoke; a burgeoning (and racially disparate) population; slums; death and dirt.
Oh and mountains!
The ways of a young imagination with such things to play upon it, can only be drawn from reading the book.
It must have been profound.
Her base was a large house (demolished roughly around the 1860's) called The Cottage. It was owned by the industrialist Thomas Baxter and looking at maps, must have been a typical, moneyed, house of the time with decent grounds.
All that is left of it and its grounds now, is a small plaque on a very large wall that puts a full-stop on a small street called South Baffin Street (y'see, Dundee's whaling heritage is all around - we even used to have an East and a West Whale Lane).
South Baffin is quite unusual in that there is no resident's parking, just a couple of forlorn benches plopped in the middle of a street of tenements.
Anyway, I digress.
Sometimes don't you just wish you had a time machine?
I suppose you do own one if you use your imagination, but all the same . . .
Looking down on the myriad of satellite dishes (Oh how 90's Dwarling!) strewn over the tenements, it was hard to get myself back to a time when a young girl would have looked out on relatively unspoiled Firth!
As I stated before, Dundee was a very different place then.
If you look at the OS at this link and then scroll in till you see Camperdown Dock - The Cottage is around the one o'clock mark up from there.
As you can see, to the left of the map are to be found the sprawling docks and the remnants of a medieval walled City.
To the right of the map you see open strath and scattered houses and factories.
Lots of open fields.
That process of the slow creep of the City outwards, is still ongoing.
Landscape becomes managed and culverted (as indeed it has always been).
Picturesque land becomes lost and built upon and before you know it, all that is left are the old names.
The area that also concerns us is Stannergate.
This still exists and it was at this point where the culverted burns entered the Tay.
On the old map, there's a promontory, but this is now buried under modern reclaimed land. Apparently the promontory was where Mary would sit and think and dream and watch all the flotsam of a working port go in and out.
Now it is the site of industry with a deep water port (owned by Forth Ports) and a substantial Rig Decommisioning Area.
Even though you can't get near the actual Stannergate foreshore itself, you can get relatively close enough, and indeed if you stand there at low tide, and close your eyes (ignoring the incessant car roar) you can sort of feel the movement of the estuary; the holding back of land; the chanelling of springs and burns and rain-water courses; the turning of the tides and the planet.
Indeed, I'm not sure what it is, but it has something.
My father-in-law, born and raised in Dundee city centre back in the '30's when it was proper poor said his mother used to take them to the Stannergate for a holiday.
It's only a couple of miles from the centre, but, at the time would have been beyond (just about) the smoke and industry of one of the busiest and hardest-working cities in Scotland.
With the nearby 'Grassy Beach' and the delights of Broughty Ferry further along the coast, the cleaner air blowing off the estuary and the un-sprawled-upon fields, must have been a panacea to a population familiar with grime and stoor.
So that's set the scene a bit hasn't it.
From South Baffin to the Stannergate is a short walk and on my first exploratory expedition (serious and with camera in hand) I didn't make it.
Initially I wanted to get a feel for the place, so I started at Broughty Ferry Road, walked to the top of the steps at South Baffin St, back down, along to the Roodyards Burial Ground (site of the ancient and long demolished St. John's Chapel [a well-known shrine from the C15th and Hospital of St John The Baptist, also from that time] though the site is documented as being a plague site for the disposal of corpses).
From there I made my way down the deserted and neglected Roodyard's Lane, crossed the main road and headed into the docks.
I've photographed the docks for years and always find something interesting - it's that sort of place.
You also tend to be ignored even with the likes of a 5x4 set-up, which is very nice indeed.
Anyway, back to Mary.
I struggled, I really did.
That she was here is fact; but to draw a line between her and modern Dundee is pretty much an impossibility.
Certainly it was for me, camera in hand, wondering what to photograph.
And this is what I did - as usual, you get the whole contact and notes, and then some prints.
Ah yes, the sage words "Always Use The Hood"!
If you own or are contemplating an old Rollei, and, like me, rather like shooting into bright light sources, then get a hood.
You can see it in the lower section of frames 4 and 8 on the contact. basically, if you don't use one, the following frame will be ruined by a band of flare. It used to frustrate the heck out of me because I had no idea what was causing it. I bought a Bay 1 hood, and it stopped. All the other frames above I am using the hood in similar lighting and there's no flare.
Save yourself heartache - USE A HOOD!
Anyway, here's the results - they're all 800dpi scans off of my prints made on Ilford MGRC for speed and convenience. It probably is a slippery slope for me - I can bang out a bunch of prints compared to the care I have to use with anything fibre-based. This being said, the results are fine and they work for me as a visual stimulus, as in:
"What are you going to do wiv all them prints then?"
"You gonna just stare at them wiv your jaw open, droolin' on yer jumper ? Or are you actually goin' to get off yer fat arse and do sumfink?"
Ah yes, the visual arse kick.
It'll be the latter, deffo.
I sort of put these into a slight sequence - not sure if it works or not.
And that as they say is that.
Hope you've found it interesting. It's amazing what local history you can find in Britain if you dig even a little bit.
I've had fun doing it, improved my knowledge and, semi-inspired, have gone on to explore the area further with a bunch more films which I'll be posting in subsequent, er, posts.
If you get a chance, or maybe you are intimately familiar with it, read Frankenstein. I initially found it difficult to approach, but when you start stripping it back, and discovering the influences that brought it into being, and indeed the influence it had on fiction full stop, well, I think it is pretty remarkable.
That's it - TTFN and remember, never drink the vinegar from a jar of pickled onions.
Well, better known as Mary Shelley, she spent a small portion of her formative years (1812 and again 1813) in Dundee.
"I wrote then—but in a most common-place style. It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered."
If you read the preface to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein she says as much, about her days spent dreaming and observing the 'drear' banks of the Tay.
It was a very different city in those days too; the town expanding exponentially from it's post-medieval port status, to full-on Industrial Centre.
The influence on a young and imaginative mind must have been immense.
She could draw from the sites of witch burnings; plague pits; haunted lanes; a smelly and bloody whaling industry; mills; smoke; a burgeoning (and racially disparate) population; slums; death and dirt.
Oh and mountains!
The ways of a young imagination with such things to play upon it, can only be drawn from reading the book.
It must have been profound.
Her base was a large house (demolished roughly around the 1860's) called The Cottage. It was owned by the industrialist Thomas Baxter and looking at maps, must have been a typical, moneyed, house of the time with decent grounds.
All that is left of it and its grounds now, is a small plaque on a very large wall that puts a full-stop on a small street called South Baffin Street (y'see, Dundee's whaling heritage is all around - we even used to have an East and a West Whale Lane).
South Baffin is quite unusual in that there is no resident's parking, just a couple of forlorn benches plopped in the middle of a street of tenements.
Anyway, I digress.
Sometimes don't you just wish you had a time machine?
I suppose you do own one if you use your imagination, but all the same . . .
Looking down on the myriad of satellite dishes (Oh how 90's Dwarling!) strewn over the tenements, it was hard to get myself back to a time when a young girl would have looked out on relatively unspoiled Firth!
As I stated before, Dundee was a very different place then.
If you look at the OS at this link and then scroll in till you see Camperdown Dock - The Cottage is around the one o'clock mark up from there.
As you can see, to the left of the map are to be found the sprawling docks and the remnants of a medieval walled City.
To the right of the map you see open strath and scattered houses and factories.
Lots of open fields.
That process of the slow creep of the City outwards, is still ongoing.
Landscape becomes managed and culverted (as indeed it has always been).
Picturesque land becomes lost and built upon and before you know it, all that is left are the old names.
The area that also concerns us is Stannergate.
This still exists and it was at this point where the culverted burns entered the Tay.
On the old map, there's a promontory, but this is now buried under modern reclaimed land. Apparently the promontory was where Mary would sit and think and dream and watch all the flotsam of a working port go in and out.
Now it is the site of industry with a deep water port (owned by Forth Ports) and a substantial Rig Decommisioning Area.
Even though you can't get near the actual Stannergate foreshore itself, you can get relatively close enough, and indeed if you stand there at low tide, and close your eyes (ignoring the incessant car roar) you can sort of feel the movement of the estuary; the holding back of land; the chanelling of springs and burns and rain-water courses; the turning of the tides and the planet.
Indeed, I'm not sure what it is, but it has something.
My father-in-law, born and raised in Dundee city centre back in the '30's when it was proper poor said his mother used to take them to the Stannergate for a holiday.
It's only a couple of miles from the centre, but, at the time would have been beyond (just about) the smoke and industry of one of the busiest and hardest-working cities in Scotland.
With the nearby 'Grassy Beach' and the delights of Broughty Ferry further along the coast, the cleaner air blowing off the estuary and the un-sprawled-upon fields, must have been a panacea to a population familiar with grime and stoor.
So that's set the scene a bit hasn't it.
From South Baffin to the Stannergate is a short walk and on my first exploratory expedition (serious and with camera in hand) I didn't make it.
Initially I wanted to get a feel for the place, so I started at Broughty Ferry Road, walked to the top of the steps at South Baffin St, back down, along to the Roodyards Burial Ground (site of the ancient and long demolished St. John's Chapel [a well-known shrine from the C15th and Hospital of St John The Baptist, also from that time] though the site is documented as being a plague site for the disposal of corpses).
From there I made my way down the deserted and neglected Roodyard's Lane, crossed the main road and headed into the docks.
I've photographed the docks for years and always find something interesting - it's that sort of place.
You also tend to be ignored even with the likes of a 5x4 set-up, which is very nice indeed.
Anyway, back to Mary.
I struggled, I really did.
That she was here is fact; but to draw a line between her and modern Dundee is pretty much an impossibility.
Certainly it was for me, camera in hand, wondering what to photograph.
And this is what I did - as usual, you get the whole contact and notes, and then some prints.
Film #66/64
Ilford HP5+ EI 200
1. 1/4 f5.6 ZIII South Baffin Street
2. 1/2 f8 ZIII South Baffin Street
3. 1/2 f4 ZIII South Baffin Street
4. 1/8 f8 ZIII Cemetery/Roodyards Road
5. 1/15 f5.6 ZIII Cemetery/Roodyards Road
6. 1/30 f4 ZIII Rolleinar 1
7. 1/4 f8 ZIII Rolleinar 1
8. 1/8 f8 ZIII Dock Street
9. 1/30 f8 ZIII Sign
10. 1/60 f5.6 ZIII Rolleinar 1
11. 1/30 f5.6 ZIII Object
12. 1/30 f5.6 ZIII Scene
Pyrocat HD 5+5+500ml 22℃
Usual agitation. 14mins, stand to 17 mins
Lots of camera shake - no tripod, should have used cable release.
Forgot hood a couple of times hence flare. The drilling thing looks amazing on neg. They're not great though - could do and will do better.
ALWAYS USE THE HOOD!!
Ah yes, the sage words "Always Use The Hood"!
If you own or are contemplating an old Rollei, and, like me, rather like shooting into bright light sources, then get a hood.
You can see it in the lower section of frames 4 and 8 on the contact. basically, if you don't use one, the following frame will be ruined by a band of flare. It used to frustrate the heck out of me because I had no idea what was causing it. I bought a Bay 1 hood, and it stopped. All the other frames above I am using the hood in similar lighting and there's no flare.
Save yourself heartache - USE A HOOD!
Anyway, here's the results - they're all 800dpi scans off of my prints made on Ilford MGRC for speed and convenience. It probably is a slippery slope for me - I can bang out a bunch of prints compared to the care I have to use with anything fibre-based. This being said, the results are fine and they work for me as a visual stimulus, as in:
"What are you going to do wiv all them prints then?"
"You gonna just stare at them wiv your jaw open, droolin' on yer jumper ? Or are you actually goin' to get off yer fat arse and do sumfink?"
Ah yes, the visual arse kick.
It'll be the latter, deffo.
I sort of put these into a slight sequence - not sure if it works or not.
 |
| Prometheus 1 |
 |
| Prometheus 2 |
 |
| Prometheus 3 |
 |
| Prometheus 4 |
 |
| Prometheus 5 |
|
| Prometheus 6 |
And that as they say is that.
Hope you've found it interesting. It's amazing what local history you can find in Britain if you dig even a little bit.
I've had fun doing it, improved my knowledge and, semi-inspired, have gone on to explore the area further with a bunch more films which I'll be posting in subsequent, er, posts.
If you get a chance, or maybe you are intimately familiar with it, read Frankenstein. I initially found it difficult to approach, but when you start stripping it back, and discovering the influences that brought it into being, and indeed the influence it had on fiction full stop, well, I think it is pretty remarkable.
That's it - TTFN and remember, never drink the vinegar from a jar of pickled onions.
