My aim in producing the photo galleries on this web site was to provide an alternative view of diggers to the back of the head normally reproduced in most archaeological texts. I should say at once that there are many good archaeological photographers out there and sometimes you do have to photograph the backs of peoples heads however this project is my attempt to redress the balance and show some of the 'faces' involved in archaeology. Since becoming interested in archaeology I have consumed quantities of archaeological literature. The publications sometimes contained superb examples of site photography and sometimes appalling ones but for a discipline that is concerned with documenting mans activities it seemed to have forgotten to record itself. There were always the odd shots of people poised over some interesting find, diggers being used as human scales or the occasional end of dig team shot but no real documentary work to record the people who do the excavation.
Initially I tried following in the traditional style of documentary work however I found that the resulting images tended to illustrate an event or mood rather than the diggers themselves. Whilst working on site at Essendon in 1993 I tried a change of approach to the subject and adopted a more portrait style of recording somewhat influenced by the work of August Sanders and others. Finding that the results matched my desired aim of 'showing the face' of archaeological diggers I decided to continue the project in this vein whenever possible.
At first I had no outlet for my work other than showing them to friends and colleagues but in 1996 Hedley Swain (see Mirroring Reality section of site) arranged for some of the images to appear in the IFA journal The Archaeologist (Winter 1996 no 27), this led to further use of some of the images by the IFA and an exhibition of a selection of the prints at the Bournemouth T.A.G conference in 1996. Since then I have been gradually accumulating more images until in 2002 I reached the point where I realised I would need to find some form of display if the images were to have any purpose, this decision led to the creation of this web site. Although the project really started at Essendon I have included images from earlier sites where the style is similar and would add to the overall content of the site.
The majority of images have been shot on a medium format camera although some earlier shots are 35mm, more recentley images have been shot using a digital camera in particular those taken in Cambridgeshire. The quality of the images does vary, whenever possible I have produced webready images from scanned photographic prints producing reasonably high quality images, however at times (ie no dark room) I have had to resort to a budget price medium format scanner that only gives a limited range of tones. If anybody has any suggestions as to how to improve medium format scanning or would care to donate me a medium format scanner, I would be grateful.
The site at present is predominantly a visual display of recent photographic images of diggers, I hope in future to add articles on the image of diggers and their historical development - any ideas feel free to drop a line.