Image above: ‘Because’

From my archive: a selection of digital images made following a trip to China, where I have merged antique textile finds with other moments and memories from my journey.  Blurring boundaries between time and place.

Boy in Summer Palace Beijing, wearing stitched applique tee shirt. Embroidered section of a Tujia woman’s garment from Guizhou Province, Qing Dynasty, early 20th Century. Shanghai Museum Costume Collection.

Image below: ‘Cryptic Messaging’

Communicative and mysterious English language texts seen on teeshirts – a mass fashion phenomenon. One written in 1812 by Ludwig Von Beethoven in Teplitz; worn, read and photographed on The Bund, Shanghai, more than two hundred years later. Buddhist symbols on Qing dynasty woven textile from Shanghai Museum.

Image: ‘On weft to Hangzhou’ 

Photograph of motorway, taken from the train to Hangzhou. Qing Dynasty woven textile.

Continuing my time travel: I undertook visual experiments, aiming to trigger comparisons to social attitudes, opportunities and expectations of young people, past, present and future.

The images shown here use digital technique to merge photographs of late 19th/ early 20th century cotton production and child millworkers in US, with components taken from recent media coverage of 21st century youth protest.

Thanks to Lewis Hine for his memories of doffers, spinners and scavengers…