Landmark

A national landmark is less a physical place than an unspoken agreement about where to stand and which way to look.

Drawn from public surveys of Britain’s favourite sites, Landmark visits the places we have collectively agreed define the nation. By the time we arrive at Stonehenge, the White Cliffs of Dover or Edinburgh Castle, we have already consumed them hundreds of times on tea towels, biscuit tins, postage stamps and weather forecasts. The sociologist John Urry called this the tourist gaze: a way of looking that is learned in advance and sold back to us on arrival. The postcard view is pre-installed long before the ticket is bought.

Rather than competing with the postcard, this series documents the apparatus required to sustain it: the queue at the castle gate, the railings and CCTV that dictate our path, the rules and caution signs or the less attractive views that no longer hide the realities of place. By turning the camera away from the monument and towards the visitors dutifully confirming what they expected to see, Landmark examines the awkward, heavily managed gap between national myth and a wet afternoon out.