Your Place, Our Pictures
This project uses photography as a collaborative tool to explore personal connections with place and memory. Across four collaborations, each participant chose a meaningful environment and set photographic rules to guide our image making. These locations often held associations with comfort, reminiscence or wellbeing. The resulting photographs reflect our different interpretations of shared surroundings, shaped by each participant’s choices and experiences.
The project was completed as part of my BA (Hons) Photography second year at the University of Suffolk.
Discovering the Shore — Pin Mill, Suffolk
For this collaboration, Tori and I visited Pin Mill because it was somewhere we had both wanted to explore. We shared an interest in its maritime history and the boat wrecks along the shoreline, particularly the contrast between their weathered structures and the surrounding landscape. Their textures, shapes and signs of decay offered opportunities to photograph the traces of the past within the present-day setting.
We decided on the photographic rules together: one of us would concentrate on close-up details while the other photographed wider views. This allowed us to explore the wrecks at different scales, connecting individual textures and fragments with their surroundings. Although we visited for similar reasons, comparing our photographs revealed how our attention and framing produced different interpretations of the same place.
First Impressions —Bawdsey, Suffolk
This collaboration at Bawdsey brought together familiarity and discovery. I already knew the location, while the other photographer, originally from outside the area, wanted to explore more of Suffolk after living in the county for over a year. Having seen little beyond Ipswich, they were interested in discovering a coastal landscape that challenged their impression of Suffolk as mainly farmland and flat countryside. The visit gave us an opportunity to explore the same surroundings from different starting points: my familiarity with the place and their first impressions.
We photographed back-to-back, keeping our cameras roughly at eye level and allowing only one attempt at each image before moving on. These rules encouraged us to trust our initial responses and make independent choices about what caught our attention. Comparing the photographs afterwards revealed how differently we could interpret a shared location, while giving me an opportunity to reconsider a landscape I thought I knew.
A Walk Through Memory — Bucklesham, Suffolk
For this collaboration, Tori took me along a walking route in Bucklesham that held memories from her childhood. As we walked, she shared stories about places that might otherwise have seemed ordinary: the spot where a favourite tree once stood, a bridge where she played pooh sticks, an area where she went sledding with friends and family in winter and a random field when potatoes were grown there for one year only, it forever earned the nickname “potato field,” a name that remained part of her memories and humour.
We agreed to take photographs only after Tori had explained the memory connected to each place. This allowed me to respond to both the surroundings and her stories, while we photographed from different angles to explore our individual perspectives. We also chose to leave the images unedited. Through the walk, I began to see how familiar places can hold a personal history, and how sharing those memories can change the way someone else looks at them.
Returning to Familiar Ground — Ickworth Estate, Suffolk
For this collaboration, Fran chose Ickworth Estate, a place connected to a period of her life spent working there. Its combination of architecture, nature and landscape provided the setting for revisiting memories of familiar surroundings and everyday routines. Fran selected three locations within the estate that were particularly memorable to her, giving our photographs a starting point rooted in her personal history.
We agreed to make just three photographs each, working back-to-back from the same position at each location. This encouraged us to spend time looking before deciding what to photograph. Although we shared the same starting point, we faced different directions and made our own choices about framing and subject. Through these paired viewpoints, the collaboration explored how Fran’s familiarity with the estate and our individual perspectives could shape different interpretations of the same place.
