Ian Wallace Photographer and Photo Historian

I’ am very excited to have my photograph “I Long to Return” included in the English Riviera Photography Showcase exhibition. The photograph was taken a year after we were forced to leave the house because of a boiler oil leakage.

If you have the opportunity, do visit and see all the great themed photography on show. The exhibition is at the Artizan Gallery in Torquay and was organised in association The South West Collective of Photography.

This is taken my the lounge of my home. In November 2019 we we forced out of our home of nearly 30 years at almost no notice when domestic heating oil from a neighbouring property leaked under the house and its odour pervaded every room. I wanted to capture something of the pain of watching our house being torn apart as a necessity of the clean up work and I wanted to share the pain with the house. The lounge is as the workmen had left it with the umbilical drainage pipes and on the mantle piece a piece of flooring saved by the builders that happened to form a heart . Because of the high humidity in the house black mould has set in. In December 2020 I took a short experimental series of semi-nude self portraits pictures. Our house is stripped of its wallcoverings and floors and it only seemed right I should share something of that nakedness with our home. I long to return.

The photograph was taken on a Yashica G124 with Ilford HP5Plus 120 film and developed in ID-11 1+1. Hand printed in my temporary darkroom on Ilford Multigrade RC and selenium toned.

English Riviera Photography Showcase 2021 | Exhibition | Arthub (art-hub.co.uk)