Dominic Pote

The theme of "The journey to work" was decided upon as a starting point for this commission. I worked with members of staff from the hospital who told me about their journeys and in particular favourite views or landscapes which they encounter on their way to work. Over a period of 3 months I returned to these specific locations and attempted to capture on film the essence of these landscapes as well as the notion of the journey. Since movement is intrinsic to my work, the theme of the journey seemed very appropriate. I wanted to capture the feeling of passing through the landscape whilst also retaining some details, mimicking the way in which we experience travelling, perceiving colours and blurred forms whilst also picking out details from the flow of our journey. The bridge, for example, in "Little Durnford" is captured as if a glimpse through the trees, a frozen moment stolen from the flow of time. When a moment is seized by our memory it is prolonged and preserved as if removed from the flow of time. In the same way I want my photographs to show both this flow of time and the static moments. In this way I hope to reinforce the notion of travelling through the landscape. Hopefully the resulting photographs reflect the journeys made by the staff I worked with as well as the journeys which many people make into Salisbury Hospital through the diverse landscapes of the county. The 6 pieces represent not only different journeys into Salisbury, but also the main variations of the Wiltshire landscape; woodland, agricultural land, the plains and river scenes. The three pieces installed in Speech and Language Therapy are complemented by short poems, made through workshops with patients and Rose Flint, poet in residence. The poems were formulated from patients' response to the photographs.