24/08/2026 - Unearthing Imagery

20th August 2026

Walking: Unearthing Imagery in Danby

After a somewhat difficult summer, I found some motivation on Thursday to head back to Danby on the North Yorkshire Moors to unearth several material platforms I had left buried across the landscape in April 2025, and to see what imagery had been revealed through the prolonged contact between the materials and the soil.

As a quick recap, last April I headed over to Danby Moor in the North Yorkshire Moors to bury several different material types, hoping that, after a durational period, they would engage with the soil and, when unearthed, produce a soil image, giving soil a form of voice and agency. The materials buried were small 5 x 4" pieces of filter paper and strips of cotton sheet, approximately 8" wide by 6ft in length. Each material piece was coated in silver gelatin, making them light sensitive and potentially capable of producing a photographic image through their prolonged interaction with the soil and surrounding landscape.

I had initially intended to return to Danby a year later in April, but due to busy working commitments I was unable to return to the landscape at that point. However, I did not necessarily mind giving the materials more time to interact with the soil, as duration is an important contributor to the development of the buried imagery. By allowing the materials to remain underground beyond my original timeframe, I was also allowing the landscape to continue its interaction with them without my intervention.

As Thursday approached, I prepared myself with the basic equipment I usually take with me when walking, including my meter reader, cathode and anode, and several zip-lock bags to carry any found samples and help prevent contamination. My intention was simple: walk through the Moors at Danby, revisit my previous steps and attempt to relocate where the materials had been buried. At each burial plot, I would take meter readings of the soil which could then, once the materials were unearthed and developed, allow me to analyse the imagery against the electrical output. This might allow me to compare micro-activity visually and analytically, considering whether there is any relationship between the numerical readings taken from the soil and the visual imagery produced through the material's prolonged contact with it.

The walk itself began as I headed towards Danby Beacon, parking my car about 300 yards down the narrow country road from the Beacon. It was a wet and windy morning, with dark grey skies and rain clouds active across the landscape. Streams of rain were visible in the distance over Castleton. The landscape felt ‘silent’, except for the sound of distant farmland and the occasional gust of wind moving through and interacting with the countryside. The farming fields were green, which was a joy to see after a drought-filled summer where most of the greens had been scorched or deprived of moisture, turning the landscape a light brown. With the season changing, the rains had finally come and were providing much-needed moisture and nutrients to the soil, allowing the grassy fields to come back to life once more.

Normally I take my walks on my own, allowing me to encounter the landscape in a much more intimate way. Some of my walks have featured my partner Rebecca, but this time I had furry company in the form of a Bernese Mountain Dog named Molly. As a dog lover, it was enjoyable to take her with me and experience a landscape she had never walked within. It would have been interesting to hear her thoughts as she experienced the Moors, but I could see her curiosity and enjoyment through her physical interactions with the landscape: running, sniffing and looking back at me with excitable eyes. There was something enjoyable about watching her encounter the landscape through her own sensory experience, responding to smells, sounds and movement that I could not necessarily perceive myself.

We started the walk towards Position One. As always, each point of interaction I have with the landscape, such as stopping and taking soil readings, remains known as a position within my research. Position One was the first location where materials had been buried. At each position I should have been able to unearth both the paper and the fabric. The landscape had not changed dramatically, although colours had differed and shrub growth had occurred, but I was still able to recognise certain features within the landscape against the imagery I had taken in April 2025, allowing me to locate where the materials had been buried. I had expected this process would not be entirely straightforward, but I thought I would at least be able to relocate the materials with some ease.

To start, I firstly gave Molly a carrot to keep herself occupied whilst I took my small shovel and began carefully unearthing the soil. After searching for around five minutes, I could not locate any materials. This was a frustrating start to the walk. I kept reviewing my previous photographs to make sure I was in the right position, and I was, but where had the materials gone? Had the landscape eaten them? Had the underworld consumed them? An interesting thought, perhaps, but I continued looking around the position. There was the ditch with stones that had fallen into the central area, white fabric twisted within the rocks, bracken sticking out at multiple positions and holes within the soil where wildlife had been. On reflection, I considered the possibility that wildlife may have dug up the materials. I then looked again at the white fabric lying across the rocks and approached it. I held up the fabric, which was a long, thin strip covered in soil-soaked patterns and colours, and there it was. In the centre of the ditch I had found my first material piece.

Why had this material piece made its way to the centre of the ditch? How had it moved? And why, within sixteen months, had it only moved approximately five feet? Although these questions remained, I was pleased to have found the material, so I folded it and placed it into a zip-lock bag. I then took my first positional reading, which measured 0.736. This was a relatively moderate reading, evidencing some level of underfoot activity. The relationship between this numerical reading and the visual material that had been produced through its time underground will become more interesting once the material has been developed and examined.

Molly and I then headed out of the ditch and walked across the top of the moorland before making our way down towards the lower land, working our way through heather, bracken and grassland, occasionally watching the odd rabbit dart across the land in front of us.

I remembered again where Position Two was located and, after reviewing another photograph, I was able to identify the position clearly. This position was almost the opposite of Position One: a mound rising up from the flatter areas, like a miniature hill with multiple wildlife holes peppering its surface. Locating the materials this time was once again proving difficult. After several incisions and lifts of soil, no materials revealed themselves. I could still see one incision from my small shovel made sixteen months ago, but no paper was to be found. After ten minutes of making several incisions into the landscape, I was eventually able to unearth another piece of fabric, however, the unearthed fabric was found outside of its burial position and away from the original position and twisted in grass. This was a relief after I had begun contemplating whether the materials were lost but again I questioned how and why the material had ended up outside of its position.

I did start to consider whether, due to the delicate material state of the filter paper, the conditions of the landscape and possibly, most likely, the moisture within the soil, the filter paper may have broken apart or dissolved into a form of pulp. I am assuming here, but after two positions and no success in locating the paper, this assumption could be correct. Equally, the materials could still be within the soil and simply remain beyond my ability to locate them. The uncertainty is part of the process, particularly when the materials have been left to interact with the landscape for such an extended period without intervention. For the reading, the soil activity showed an increase from Position One, with Position Two measuring 0.863. This increase potentially evidences greater micro-activity within the soil, and the image produced on the material might allow me to explore whether this increased activity has any relationship with the visual patterns that have emerged.

Moving towards Position Three, Molly and I headed further down the sloping landscape and towards a stream where I knew material had been buried in a flatter landscape beneath a mossy tree branch. During this part of the walk, the grassland and heather had substantially grown over the sixteen months and had become problematic to find a clear route through. The terrain itself is uneven, with multiple erosion lines cutting through the landscape and other wildlife holes hidden beneath the grass and heather, making the walk slower as I tried to be careful and avoid rolling an ankle.

Alongside the uneven terrain, the heavy rain had caught us up, and so we made our way through the grass and heather towards Position Three, contemplating whether to locate some shelter for a while and wait for the rain to move along. This was a decision we eventually took, and Molly and I sheltered beneath a series of trees, perching ourselves against some rocks while taking in some light food and water. Once the rain had lightened, we walked slightly uphill towards Position Three, where locating the material fabric was very simple. I believe this was due to the burial position being relatively flat and sheltered. After a couple of shovel incisions, the fabric appeared, but again no filter paper was to be found. I unearthed the fabric material, gave it a shake to remove some of the loose soil and placed it into a zip-lock bag.

The reading at Position Three was the highest, measuring 0.923. This indicated a high level of electrical output, nearly producing one volt through the single cathode and anode arrangement. If I were to create a battery here using multiple cells, the energy reading would potentially be higher. I am able to make this assumption based on my previous experience of taking readings through a single cathode and anode, where a higher reading could potentially be multiplied when using multiple cathodes and anodes within a cell system. With lower readings, an increase would still occur through multiple cells, but not necessarily as significantly as with a single higher reading. At this stage, I am interested in how these readings might sit alongside the photographic materials and whether the numerical evidence of electrical activity can offer another way of considering what is happening beneath the surface of the landscape.

Position Four was a further walk away, which meant making our way towards the lower Danby forest area. This section of the landscape was always full of life, from mosses, lichens and fungi to watery streams, plants and the many small insects moving through the undergrowth. After coming across the small issue of trying to get Molly through a gate passage, which required me to pick up her 45kg body and carefully lift her over and down, we were able to continue towards Position Four. Making our way through the forest and across the shallow stream, we came to a slight clearing where, again, I was able to recognise the position as the last place I had buried materials.

As Molly occupied herself in the very lush green grass, exploring her surroundings, I found myself making multiple incisions into the landscape in an attempt to locate some trace of material. For some time I continued to unearth the soil, but with no luck at finding anything. Multiple times I retraced my original photographs, counting steps, tracing tree lines, considering landscape features and looking for changes in the ground that might help me relocate the burial point. Yet nothing would reveal itself. This was a disappointing end to the walk, which had otherwise been both challenging and enjoyable. Three of the four positions had been able to reveal interactive materials, and I would have liked to have found the filter papers and final strip of fabric, but I have to accept that not all of the materials can necessarily be recovered.

Perhaps this is also part of the process. I had left these materials within the landscape for sixteen months with the intention of allowing them to interact with the soil, and that interaction has potentially altered, moved or even destroyed them. The inability to recover everything therefore becomes another aspect of the research, rather than simply a failure to locate the material. The landscape has its own agency within this process, and the materials have been subject to conditions that I cannot fully control or predict.

My aim now is for the unearthed materials to dry on the washing line in my garden, where they are doing so as I type. Once they have dried, I will apply a fix to stop any further development within the silver gelatin. I will then, as stated at the beginning of this text, analyse the unearthed materials alongside the soil meter readings and attempt to translate the relationship between micro-activity, visual patterns and numerical data. The fabric material will also be scanned into my computer and refined into a high-definition digital image, allowing me to examine the material at a much larger scale and explore the colour arrangements and visual patterns hidden within the soil.

Returning to Danby has therefore provided another opportunity to consider the relationship between walking, soil, material and duration within my practice. I went into the landscape expecting to recover four sets of materials, but I returned with three. I also returned with a series of questions about movement, decomposition, moisture, electrical activity and the agency of the landscape itself.