UK at Home book
78 images Created 28 Oct 2008
From the claustrophobia of a Nuclear submarine to the primitive hut of an island hermit: These images are a Scottish exploration of Living Space, part of the 'UK at Home' book project produced by Against All Odds Productions.
".. Taking a peek behind our front doors and documents the harmonies and paradoxes of home across the UK at the beginning of the 21st century."
"During the week's assignment, I drove the Scottish Highland roads and coastal tracks looking for properties that seemed to sum up the idea of remote residential survival. But I started inside the claustrophobia of HMS Vigilant at the Royal Naval Base Clyde where Vanguard class nuclear submarines are penned, much to the disapproval of the Faslane Peace Camp, whose woodland residents I visited next to see their shacks and caravans from where they protest passionately against these same nuclear arsenals.
I spent a day with former sailor and soldier Tom Leppard, otherwise known as the Leopard Man, a 72 year-old self-proclaimed hermit of 22 years who has secreted himself away on to an otherwise uninhabited island where he has built for himself a weather-roofed shelter and the close company of local nature and wildlife as company. From the extreme of 21st century technology and warfare, Tom slept in a tiny underground hut, seemingly living the very antithesis of all I experienced in a nuclear vessel, where able-bodied seamen slept almost with their cheeks resting against the smooth bodies of Intercontinental Trident missiles."
"My furthest destination was the ancient Dunvegan Castle, ancestral home to Hugh McLeod, the young chieftain of the clan McLeod. Along the way, I met a home-owner living beneath mythical Viking mountains; an exterior decorator and roof repairer; a sheep breeder and found isolated cottages exposed to the fearful Atlantic weather fronts that batter this western isle."
".. Taking a peek behind our front doors and documents the harmonies and paradoxes of home across the UK at the beginning of the 21st century."
"During the week's assignment, I drove the Scottish Highland roads and coastal tracks looking for properties that seemed to sum up the idea of remote residential survival. But I started inside the claustrophobia of HMS Vigilant at the Royal Naval Base Clyde where Vanguard class nuclear submarines are penned, much to the disapproval of the Faslane Peace Camp, whose woodland residents I visited next to see their shacks and caravans from where they protest passionately against these same nuclear arsenals.
I spent a day with former sailor and soldier Tom Leppard, otherwise known as the Leopard Man, a 72 year-old self-proclaimed hermit of 22 years who has secreted himself away on to an otherwise uninhabited island where he has built for himself a weather-roofed shelter and the close company of local nature and wildlife as company. From the extreme of 21st century technology and warfare, Tom slept in a tiny underground hut, seemingly living the very antithesis of all I experienced in a nuclear vessel, where able-bodied seamen slept almost with their cheeks resting against the smooth bodies of Intercontinental Trident missiles."
"My furthest destination was the ancient Dunvegan Castle, ancestral home to Hugh McLeod, the young chieftain of the clan McLeod. Along the way, I met a home-owner living beneath mythical Viking mountains; an exterior decorator and roof repairer; a sheep breeder and found isolated cottages exposed to the fearful Atlantic weather fronts that batter this western isle."
