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Clara Whitfield

Workshops

Benches, hands and weather

Fifteen years of photographs made in other people’s workrooms, and a few from mine. One camera, mostly the wrong film.

Fifteen years of photographs made in other people’s workrooms, and a few from mine. One camera, mostly the wrong film, and a standing agreement that nobody has to tidy up first.

With a camera in my hands I stop composing sentences, which is the only reliable way I have found of stopping.

Benches

A wooden letterpress drawer filled with metal type sorts
Unvarnished violin bodies hanging in rows from hooks in a workshop
The brass gear train of a clock movement, open on the bench
A hand plane resting in a heap of pale wood shavings
Low sun coming through the dusty windows of a workshop
Worn brushes standing in a jar on a dark shelf
An old hand tool lying on a scarred wooden surface
The teeth of a hand saw blade, close enough to count
A mortise cut by chisel into a length of oak
Glass jars and tins ranged along a workshop shelf
A wooden ladder seen through an opening in an old brick wall
A weathered brick wall with grey paint flaking off it

I have never once been asked to move so that something would look better. Every bench on this page is arranged the way its owner left it, which is the only reason any of it is worth photographing.

The apron is the closest thing to a portrait here. I stopped photographing faces in workshops years ago, because the hands were always doing something more interesting.

Hands

A mason’s hands steadying a chisel against a block of limestone
A potter’s hands drawing up the wall of a pot on the wheel
A smith at the forge, sparks rising from the fire
A stack of old leather-bound books on a wooden shelf

Four hands, four trades, one week in February.

Bundles of cut reed stacked against a workshop wall
A weathered timber shed standing behind a drystone wall
A stone wall dividing a green field from the sea

A note on the captions

Most of these have no caption, on purpose. Where there is one it is not a description, it is whatever I was actually thinking when I pressed the shutter. Three rules have survived fifteen years:

  • Never ask anyone to do the interesting thing again for the camera.
  • If the room is dark, the photograph is dark.
  • Weather counts as a subject.
A drystone wall crossing a green field under a wide sky
Frost on rough grass with the sun low behind the trees

The oldest photograph here is from 2011 and the newest is from a fortnight ago. I cannot tell them apart any more, which I choose to read as good news.