Graveyard Bins

Al Brydon

I'm a photographer based in the north of the UK working on long term landscape photography projects. I have been published and exhibited both in the UK and abroad and am co-founder of the Inside the Outside photography collective.

Landscape photography is the perfect vehicle for narrative and storytelling. I'm interested in the history of landscape and human interaction and alteration of landscape. The long departed people who have shaped that world sing songs. I'm slowly learning to listen.

al-brydon.com

Charlotte Parkin

Head of Marketing & Sub Editor for On Landscape. Dabble in digital photography, open water swimmer, cooking buff & yogi.

We have interviewed Al twice in the past, once as a featured photographer in 2013 and then in 2018 to talk more about the projects he was working on at the time (click here for interview). Richard Earney wrote an end frame in December 2019 that caught my attention and I got in touch with Al to find out more about his Graveyard Bins project.

It’s been two years since we spoke, tell us what you have been doing photographically over this period?

Wow, that's a lot of time to cover. I'll try and be concise.

I've had two books published, been part of several exhibitions here and abroad, made a short film, published some new zines with my friends at Inside the Outside, recently finished a series of Polaroid lifts which were to be exhibited at the end of March but that's postponed, started doing some workshops with my friend Fleur Olby called the 'Art of Walking', probably given a talk or two but don't quote me on that and started two new long term bodies of work to run concurrently. I've probably forgotten something but that's the gist.

Richard Earney wrote a fantastic end frame about one of the images from this project. Do you want to recap on how this project came about? Where did it all start? What's your personal interest in this subject?

It started roughly 5 or maybe 6 years ago. And it wasn't something I ever thought would be a project or body of work. The flowers were just something I noticed. That tiny tiny moment of 'oh yeah'. And that's all it was. I had my phone with me and I stuck it over the bins and made one or two photographs. I think I might have put them up on social media assuming no one would look at them and I was right, no one did, and quite rightly so. They weren't very good. And in a way the fact that no one looked at them kind of made me want to make more of them. But I didn't really. Not for a while. And that's where it all begins, I guess. By noticing something that maybe someone else misses. Everyone can see something that's invisible to others.