Drawn out from an auto-ethnographic practice-based project entitled: Kings Hill, Dominica: Framing Ideas of Home, Heritage and Belonging [working title].
[KEW GARDENS, DOMINICA’S BOTANIC GARDENS AND MARTINQUES JARDIN DE BALATA GARDENS]
Shot in London in March 2024 as a way to practise my photography with tropical plants, these initial photographs of Kew Gardens Palm House will be complemented by a series of photographs made with Dominica’s Botanic Gardens. This collection of photographs will also draw on a developing Global Black Geographies auto-ethnographic project I am committing to with the locale of Kings Hill Dominica and Dominica’s own respective Botanic Gardens.I am interested in exploring King’s Hill due to my unexplored familial connections to the locale. King’s Hill is my mother's former home before she migrated to the U.K. It is also currently a home to extended family who remain to live on the island. The creation of a geographic practice-based body of work is the primary aim of this project, which I intend to freely share with archives/libraries in Dominica and the U.K.
Comprised by 40 acres of former sugar cane plantation fields to the east of Roseau, Dominica’s Botanic Gardens were set up by a series of British and Kew Gardens based curators who travelled to the island in the 1890s to orientate the gardens towards economical and experimental activities through the cultivation various ornamental plants, whose origins spread across the globe. My practice-related approach to this auto-ethnographic body of work will see me explore framing ideas of home, heritage and belonging through a visual attendance to Dominica’s natural and man-made landscapes.
Dominica’s original name is ‘Waitukubli’ which means ‘tall is her body’ and this name was bestowed upon the island by the indigenous Kalinago people. These photographs serve as a means of visually attending to Dominica’s natural landscapes and the locale of Kings Hill. Kings Hill Dominica is a small suburban community located beside Dominica’s capital of Roseau. Kings Hill is also the locale that my family have called home since the early 1960s and it is where I stayed for 31 days earlier during April/May in 2024. This locale was named in honour of the monarch of the day King George III and part of this hill (Morne Bruce Viewpoint) was used as the location of a British military garrison.At the foot of Kings Hill resides a catholic cemetery, a savannah and Dominica’s National Botanic Gardens, from which you can walk into Roseau, Dominica’s capital city. Prior to being a locale occupied by the botanical gardens which are usually spaces associated with green imperialism and colonialised inceptions, the 40 acres of land that makes up the gardens were previously a part of the Bath and Rose Hill sugarcane estate and former plantation.
RESOLVE: NURTURING ECOLOGIES [2023]
Passport session - Archiving under a Surveillance State
This workshop was set to challenge ideas around how archives can both operate within a dichotomous relationship; both institutional and family lines simultaneously blurred in visual depictions. Aiming to take back ownership in the formality of the passport image, this session acted as both a creative workshop and group discussion around portraiture, nostalgia, and family archiving, together with dialogue about what is community in 2023 and how do we best archive community?
The idea of family archives for some people within the Black diaspora is limited due to the nature of economic and social pressures of moving to a new country. Taking from personal experience, the lack of visual archives from my Jamaican family, their immigration and passport images become the only reference of their past selves. The passport, being a fundamental institutional and surveillance document, led to being the foundation of my family archive. This workshop aimed to combine the theme of documentation and its rigidness to curate a new archive for the practitioners and the photographers in question.[WORDS BY ELLA TEMITAYO BARRET]
This series of portraits was collaboratively shot on the roof of SADDACA in Sheffield, U.K. with Jana and Jashan as a part of Ella’s Passports workshop session.This session took place as a part of the RESOLVE’collectives Nurturing Ecologies Residency, which took place in August 2023. Bringing together a maverick group of artists and practitioners, this week will forever live on in my memories as one of the greatest times dedicated to solidarity, heart work and community. I was truly honoured to contribute to the documentation of this experience.
In Ella’s passport photographs session she examined the importance, memories and politics surrounding passport photographs using her own archive of familial and passport photographs. In response to this sharing, myself, Jana and Jashan set up a stool and small photograph backdrop and made a series of passport-styled portraits with Ella’s session attendees. The summer sun slowly graced Sheffield’s hills on this day. Mad love to this city, it’s people and all the homies who I will forever pay homage to.[SHOUTOUTS TO THE DOCUMENTATION GANG]
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Location:
https://sadacca.co.uk/about/