about bowieland
Photographing places where someone once was in the hope of finding something of them is like looking for ghosts. The physical place itself is unavoidable, but your subject matter is invisible.
In the places Bowie was known to haunt during his lifetime, people had added their own versions of him through murals and graffiti, hand-written notes and flowers: offerings.
No grave, no tomb. Silver dust through slender fingers.
As I walked with Peter Carpenter and we discussed the man we were chasing and the places we found ourselves, Pete scribbled notes and I collected images.
Taking a lead from Bowie (and William Burroughs) I began to collect photographs and ephemera as if they were pieces of the fabled ‘cut-ups’. I began to pull the fragments together making space for chance, synchronicity - honouring my mistakes as hidden intentions.
Imagery appeared, symbols rose up.
Over the years we walked, re-walked, made notes and sketches and talked about our elusive, shimmering subject - each step gradually bringing a new place into being like one of Calvino’s ‘Invisible Cities’.
We had entered a zone, we had summoned Bowieland.
‘Bowieland’ by Peter Carpenter is published by Monoray and is a journey into the past, tracing the streets, towns, and locations where David Jones transformed into something extraordinary.
‘With life-affirming tread, Peter Carpenter tracks down fugitive selves, memory phantoms, through places lesser surveyors thought had vanished for ever, in quest of his bright trickster angel, the many named and multi-masked David Bowie.”
-Iain Sinclair, (Author of London Orbital)
My heartfelt thanks to Peter for his friendship, and for inviting me to join him on these explorations and wanderings.