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The Fens, standing in for the Ouse. © D.Tyler 2010

I heard Olivia Laing talking about her book To The River on Woman's Hour in April and immediately felt that this was a book I was going to love. The idea of weaving a narrative through and along a river had been haunting me since reading Dart by Alice Oswald, a book that I was drawn to after swimming that river at various points for Wild Swim.

Anyway, "To The River" is a wonderful book, you'll find excellent reviews all over the place, many evoking the "new nature" writings of Deakin and Mabey and the psycho-geography of W.G.Sebald. I think it's beautiful, honest and transportive and when I was contacted by the publishers to ask if I might have a image in my archive for the paperback edition all I could think was that I really hoped I did.

Initially we looked at work from Wild Swim and in particular images that were strong but that didn't get into the book. As well as these I sent some other work from different projects that I thought might be suitable and it's one of these that was eventually chosen, an image from my Watermarks project. The proofs (see below) arrived yesterday and I'm delighted with the result, even more so because I hear that the author and the publishers are also pleased. I can't think of an un-cheesy way to express how proud I am to be a part of a really great work, a small part, but a part.

Old wrecks

Hackney's abandoned cars. Click for larger image. © D Tyler 2000.

Whilst searching for some ancient scans last week I popped an old, un-labeled CD into my computer and I found a series of images that I'd almost entirely forgotten: images I'd made soon after moving to Hackney focusing on wrecks of cars. When I first lived in Hackney, back at the turn of the century, one of the area's most characteristic features was it's wealth of abandoned cars. At the time you had to pay to have cars scrapped and so many were left on side roads to slowly fall apart or become magnets for more unwanted scrap. These cars, and those stolen and then torched by joyriders, kept the area looking edgy and deprived even as the first wave of neo-yuppies (like me) moved in, carrying with us the seeds of gentrification. Hackney is very different now, in some ways. There are fewer abandoned cars and more fixed-wheel bikes, fewer empty shops and more deli's, it's less edgy and deprived perhaps but still referencing edgy and deprived, ironically and with retro flair. Nevertheless for a big part of the population the last ten years evolution has meant nothing more than a greater range of things to feel excluded from. Hackney's underprivileged youth have yet to reap the benefits of the hipster influx and the two groups are suspicious if not hostile towards each other. The abandoned wrecks are off the streets now, but have they really gone away?

I might well never have remembered these images without accidentally finding them, which is a shame, not because I think they are particularly good, but because ten years on they form a historical record and serve as a reminder that photographing the ephemera of daily life can ground your recollections in interesting ways.