Book - The Plain (2020).
Posted: 19th October 2020
Book – The Plain (2020).
The Plain (2020)
This book of photos taken by Melanie Friend, called ‘The Plain’, is a project she undertook over 4-5 years (from August 2015 to February 2020) during which time she visited the plain over a hundred times (full days or half days) to get to know the landscape, take the photographs in different lights and seasons and interview local inhabitants. She examines the military presence and civilian residential attitudes of those living close to the hardware loosed off in the training of soldiers on Salisbury Plain. Caroline Lanyon has contributed CND related material from when members of Salisbury CND drove out there to find Cruise missiles in the middle of the night!
Copies signed on request (write to me at [email protected])
Hardcover, 96 pages, 43 colour plates. Published by Dewi Lewis Publishing, October 2020. ISBN: 978-1-911306-70-2
Essay by Matthew Flintham, artist and academic.
Edited by Melanie Friend and Dr. Pippa Oldfield (photo-historian, curator and Head of Programme at Impressions Gallery).
UK postage and packaging charges (normally £5.00) waived during October & November 2020.
(If you are ordering from overseas, please email me with your country and zip code for a shipping quote).
Please make your payment via PayPal using this email for the recipient: [email protected]
Your book should arrive 2-4 working days after receipt of your order (that’s UK orders!)..
(If you would prefer to pay by cheque, please email me; delivery times will be longer to allow time for cheque clearance)..
Note: After clicking on ‘add to cart’, please click on the cart/shopping trolley symbol on top right hand side of the page.
https://melaniefriend.com/new-products
Introduction: The chalk grasslands of Salisbury Plain have been used since 1897 as a preparation ground for war. The heart of this ancient English landscape is an eerie and ambiguous space. The plain is both the UK’s largest military training ground and also a conservation area shared with archaeologists and dogwalkers, larks and corn buntings, wildflowers and rare forms of wildlife.
The Plain photographs reveal the military presence as a disquieting feature on the horizon: a rusty tank positioned as a target, a red box used for field telephones in a copse, smoke from an exploding shell. In the inaccessible ‘Impact Area’, a cluster of distant soldiers undertake firing exercises. Red flags warn the visitor to keep out; signage to the military remind them not to drive tanks over Neolithic barrows. Occasionally, there are closer encounters, with an artillery gun or an armoured vehicle, but often the landscape holds sway; manoeuvres are heard, but not always seen. The Plain continues my work on everyday militarisation, revealing how war is embedded in this most English of landscapes.
