exeter lockdown 2020
Copyright © 2024 Robin Mudge & Unseen Press
ISBN: 978-0-9840286-2-7
Journal of Exeter Dérives
March 23 - June 23 2020
Robin Mudge
Introduction
Recently, I came across the word ‘psychogeography’, a term developed in the mid-20th century by French thinker Guy Debord and the Situationist International movement.Psychogeography involves wandering aimlessly through a city, uncovering hidden or unexpected aspects of it, as one does so. These unplanned journeys are often called ‘dérives’, and the person undertaking the journey is referred to as a‘flâneur’.
I love wandering around the back streets of cities and towns, taking pictures that give a viewer an experience as good as being there – well almost. At the very least, sharing a sense of the places I have lived. Soit transpires that I have been a flâneur for most of my photographic life.
It all started back in the first weeks as a young, eager photography student in the late 1960’s at Plymouth College of Art and Design. The very first assignment was to go out and take pictures of the neighbourhood in which I lived that portrayed a ‘sense of place’. Although itching to use my brand new 35mm SLR, I was handed the very simplest of cameras, a Kodak Brownie 44A, loaded with a roll of 127 black and white film and providing the opportunity of taking 12 pictures.
There were no distracting controls on the camera, allI had to do was look for pictures that would give a viewer a feeling of ‘being there’. Little did I know it then, but that experience has had a profound influence on my professional life, as both a photographer and filmmaker ever since.
Anyway,at the time of the first COVID-19 national lockdown in 2020, I was living in Exeter (called Isca by the Romans), and we were only allowed outdoors once a day for exercise within an hour's walk of home. Although being familiar with Exeter, having been brought up in the area, it is not often you get the chance to explore a deserted city and be able to stand in the middle of completely empty streets, seeing familiar places in a totally new light!
In this journal, selections of pictures from daily dérivesare organised into four parts. Part One is from the area around St David’s (near where my home was) and leading into the City Centre. Part Two investigates St James. Part Three moves on to the areas of Newtown and St Leonard’s, and Part Four circles back to my home along the river and in the quayside.
While exploring the pictures in this journal and other similar publications, it’s worth remembering that the opportunity of taking them was brought about by a catastrophic global health disaster that caused the death of over 3 million people worldwide, and left hundreds of thousands of people suffering long term debilitating health issues.
The camera that started it all.
St David's & City Centre Part One
