Helen Harris - Inland (MA)

Helen Harris has recently completed her Photography MA. She has always wanted to achieve an MA in Photography but she was always busy with her home life, career, etc. For her MA project she knew she wanted to explore her surroundings and to come to terms with where she lives and her environment.

Helen grew up on the north coast of Devon. She spent a lot of time with her step dad on the coast recording the coastal birds. She always found this environment very intense with the smells, the sounds, the sights, etc. Since moving to University she has never returned to the area to live, living more inland than she was used to growing up.

She know lives around the Eastern end of the Mendips (high area of Limestone). In contrast to other areas of the Mendips there isn't a lot going on. It has a bit of history but she has never found it particularly interesting. She knew when she moved to the area she would be spending a lot of time there so it felt like a very important decision. However, she felt out of place for some time, with the area being quite different from her coastal hometown. She suggested moving a few times but her family were comfortable where they were.

One day while walking around the area Helen met a woman and her daughter. She taught the daughter before but didn't realise she lived down the road from her. The Mother she soon became friends with and she started to share her knowledge of the area's history with Helen. She had Aerial photographs of the area taken just after the 2nd World War. Helen discovered that they did two excavations of the caves in the area. They found lots of interesting things including two human remains (4,000-5,000 years old) and pottery which had thumbnail impressions. Later excavations showed hundreds of bones from all sorts of animals, human teeth, more pottery from a different period to the earlier found pottery.

Helen's MA project shows her exploration of the area including it's wide history. Half way through her first year she had to do a mini exhibition. She printed the pictures of the bones on tissue paper (which she didn't try again because it was too difficult and fiddly). Helen found that some of the teeth from the human remains were flat on the surface. She thought it might be from eating off bones but her daughter (who is an archeologist) confirmed that it is actually because they used their teeth as tools a lot of the time.

Helen found the remains they found in the cave very interesting but this only covered a small area of the history. She decided to look at some crinoids that she found (from millions of years ago) which would widen the area of history she was looking at to broaden the project and not focus too much on the archeological.

Her book is now complete but she wants to change certain aspects of the design. She always recommends printing out dummy books and looking at the way people read through the book. One of the pages has a flip section which not many people are lifting. This cuts off an important image of a jaw bone with flat teeth, which takes away some of the power of the image.