Ten years ago, I was commissioned to create a poster to help mark the 20th anniversary of Bristol’s twinning with Oporto/Porto in Portugal – one of the nicest commissions I’ve ever been asked to do! I had proposed the idea to the Twinning Association way back in the 1980s and it lay dormant for a long time, but the anniversary provided an opportunity that I jumped at. Continue reading
Author Archives: Liz Milner
In thrall to spring – enthralled by algorithms.
As spring merged into summer this year I found I’d arranged an experimental, and for me, slightly uneasy, alliance between the natural and technical worlds – the outcome is a vernal-themed kind of digital patchwork quilt. Continue reading
7. The Woods, box art – Sticks, signs and leaves at Fringe Arts Bath
I went to the opening of Fringe Arts Bath last night (masses of work to see across the city) where my ‘portable place portrait’ – Sticks, signs and leaves was included in a show called Out of the Box, put together by the charming Tom Buchanan and Amy Douglas. Continue reading
‘Umbra Sumus – We are but shadows’ (or, Down Brick Lane)
I started writing this last summer, not long after a visit to Spitalfields in the East End of London but since it was no more than a record of a day out it seemed a bit pointless. However, it was a very intense and stimulating day that’s stuck in the back of my mind, and since the visit last year some intriguing information about my own and my partner’s family histories has emerged that is closely, and unexpectedly in my case, tied to the locations we visited.
Clearly ours are not the only families to have relatives whose circumstances have sucked them in to London in search of work in difficult times; ours followed the Rivers Lee and various tributaries of the Colne in the late 19th Century from the city’s rural fringes 20 miles away during an agricultural depression, but others came to this London village from 17th century France, 18th century Ireland, 19th century Russia, and 20th century Bangladesh.
Lindy Clark – seriously playful
58 years ago today Lindy Clark was born in Blackpool – she moved to Bristol where we met her a quarter of a century ago through various arts activities, and yesterday we celebrated her birthday in one of her favourite spots – a wood near Bristol vibrating with bluebells. Sadly though, she wasn’t with us this time. When we took her there in June last year it transpired that it would be her final visit to the outside world and she died in September after heroically and humorously living with a brain tumour for over five years. Continue reading
6. The Woods. Sticks, signs, leaves – again, but smaller
Playing with the idea of place portraits – I’ve returned (thanks to stimulus from friends) to an almost abandoned book project in the new year, now (with great sense of satisfaction) completed. It’s a miniature version of the book/artwork you can see here. I like the idea of having something you can carry around in your pocket that could be reminder of Continue reading
Pre occupations
A small sample of a dress panel belonging to my great, great grandmother
I’ve reached that phase of life where family history seems to become remarkably engaging and despite paying scant attention for decades to stories held by my mother, a single snippet of unexpected information has taken root and grown in my head leading to fervent online archive searches to feed the growing tree of relationships.
Once statistical details of two or three closely related family members were established, those stories came into their own by providing more specific identification and the stories began to fit together with the data – migration from rural Hampshire to London, hasty marriages and untimely deaths. This developing, and often poignant narrative fertilises the imagination until people who have just been names begin somehow to inflate into something more plausible, like the process of fleshing out characters in a book. Then with online access to archives of old maps, photographs and present day ‘travels’ on Google Street view, images merge to recreate Continue reading
Photographic employment in the 1980s – the wild world
It’s 1984 and three years into motherhood and although Orwell’s Big Brother hadn’t quite materialised we were five years into the reign of Margaret Thatcher, but here I’ll grudgingly admit she managed to do one good thing for our family. In order to camouflage escalating unemployment figures a number of job creation schemes were initiated by her government. I was employed on one as a photographer for a project based in the Natural History department of Bristol’s Museum. The schemes initially provided a year-long contract for Continue reading
Photographic employment in the late 70s – the commercial realm
1979 – The days of special hair and flares
In 1979 my partner and I moved to Bristol after some wilderness time in West Wales and I spent the first few days after our arrival in the neighbourhood phone box (no mobiles then and no phone in flat) calling every one of the 30 – 40 photographers listed in the Bristol phone book to try to gain a foothold in photographic employment. Towards the end of the list and close to despair one man finally agreed to meet me. A commercial photographer who mostly worked for advertising agencies Continue reading
Photographic employment in the 1970s – industrial territory
Sometime between the Yom Kippur war in 1973 and the three day week in 1974 – a consequence of the oil crisis following the war – I entered the industrial sector of photography working for the Building Research Establishment. It was part of the Department of the Environment and based at a sprawling site in the grounds of a one-time Victorian mansion with dozens of different departments housed in an odd mix of temporary buildings and high tech labs. Here hundreds of people (from stereotypically dull bureaucrats to truly eccentric types) worked on all aspects of research into building – from brick packaging to acoustics; from construction in earthquake zones to how buildings collapse; and from studying wind on high-rise buildings to the immersion Continue reading
