100 Metres Exhibition

The exhibition toured locations in Dunster, Lynmouth, Minehead and Taunton.

I enjoy photographing people so I chose a section of Dulverton; the length of Fore Street to Bank Square, which people would recognise as the core of the town centre. I chose a typically wet morning but it changed to a glorious afternoon and evening.

Most of us visit a town on a mission and a deadline.  When it is for work or shopping people normally want to get in, achieve what they set out to do and get home again.  In Dulverton there is a contrast between these visits and leisure activities: either by local people out for the day or evening; or  the visitors and holiday makers, strolling at a different pace, sight seeing, window shopping, eating ice cream or popping into a cafe or pub.

Dulverton has everything that you would want to find in a small, English country town: provisions for the rural population, rest and repast for the traveller,  spaciousness,  graciousness and  human hugger-mugger.

This project is about “mindfulness”, “inner calm” and “feeling the place”.  Some might think that there is a contradiction between these things and a busy, town centre location.  There need not be. Observing a town waking up, coming into life, winding down at the end of the day and returning to slumber, is in many ways like watching a life in the day of a living organism.

The life of a town is full of busy days; through the observance of but one day we may witness something of its life. Between the twilight before dawn and the hour after midnight I tried to record its breathing.

“It is a spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black. You can hear the dew falling and the hushed town breathing.” Dylan Thomas