I have recently purchased Pieter Hugo’s book ‘Kin’ and thumbing through this book I started to feel a very strong connection with the message, well part of the message any way. I can’t relate to my home being South Africa, but the notion of ‘home’ is a strong one within my most recent project.
“[…]to look at the tenuous ties that bind us to, and repel us from each other. Home is where belonging and alienation coexist. Does this belonging liberate or confine us? Does it tie us to the terrible weight of history or free us from it?”
-Pieter Hugo, Kin.
This is where I go back to talking about myself, my project ‘ ‘S e Croitears a th’ Annainn’ (We are Crofters) looks at crofting in the small area around where I live. Most of these places, though not my home (nor do some of them have children of my age), are places of my childhood memories. I have these ties to the place, we never moved house, my mother has lived in our home for over 30 years. From knocks on the skirting to the way the grass grabs to the rocks in the surrounding fields, it is home.
This project started out as a way to document the surrounding area, in a hopefully new way, most people that photograph the Hebrides, and its ways of life, are not local. I feel that this tie to the place has changed the way I have looked at the area, but thats not to say you will see it in the same way, I can’t tell you how to see. But this project has ended up being about my ties to the land, the inescapable locality, I tried to detach myself from myself, but the place took charge and I am happy with the resulting photographs.
Ruaridh Cameron 