This article is a part of the Eustace collection - aimed at helping others create counter-narratives to threats to our historic environment.

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The Cultural Seed Bank

How photography can help preserve, reimagine, and sow the past into the present, carrying patterns, stories, and craft into the future.

"The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera." 

Dorothea Lange

Photographing St. Benedict, Gyffin, Wales

I'm at a very special place in Gyffin near Conwy in Wales. It houses a rare medieval paint scheme. I'm drawn to the parclose screens that segregate the side chapels. They are decorated with quatrefoils and other geometric shapes. 

I suppose it's easy to walk past them, but I think of their age and their craft: the hands that made them and the events that they have witnessed both national and local. 

My trick is to imagine them out of context - silly really - but it seems to give them an extra kick. It puts their individuality into perspective. 

Buzzing with this new perspective, I set about photographing elements like this in the hope of sharing the singularity of the occasion with others, and with the wish of disseminating the pattern like a wind blown daisy seed - a bit of heritage grafting with the aid of my camera.

I remember taking a similar shot of the screen at St. Anno's in Llananno, Wales. I took it for the Friends of Friendless Churches. The image (or at least part of it) was used for their re-branding logo. Out of the old and into the new - a kind of cultural re-birth, heritage morphosis.

These quick-fire selfie times sometimes shroud the real power of the photograph to teach, inspire and influence, to filter, to communicate, to remember and record. 

The photograph is a both a memory bank and a seed bank. 

With that in mind I hope that you will pick up your camera or device and go out and photograph something that you find inspiring or intriguing. Think of it out of context and then take the photograph with your mind full of its wonder. 

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In fact.. if you do take a photograph that inspires you - please let me know via contact - and I'll showcase them here with a little bit about why, where, when and who.

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Eustace - Andy Marshall’s Genius Loci Digest
The Eustace Collection helps provide nuanced counter-narratives to threats to our historic environment whether it be the mightiest cathedral or the collective thumbprint on an ancient latch. Updated regularly, the aim of Eustace is to build up a resource to help others. They are accessible to everybody.
Andy Marshall's Genius Loci DigestAndy Marshall

Photographs and words by Andy Marshall (unless otherwise stated). Most photographs are taken with Iphone 14 Pro and DJI Mini 3 Pro.