Island Site Business Quarter 2007 - 2009

These portraits are part of an ongoing series taken on a vast uncultivated space situated southeast of Nottingham central called The Island Site. Because of its geographical position The Island Site is a convenient thoroughfare or dwelling for the community who live beyond or around it. Owing to its frequent use, The Island Site is crisscrossed by pathways. In absence of human presence this seeming irrational sprawl of trails indicate the negotiations individuals and groups have made when passing through the terrain. It is because of its geographical location too that, in a projected multimillion-pound redevelopment of Nottingham's Eastside, The Island Site occupies a central strategic position. Conceived by urbanists as "high quality integrated and mixed-use space," the area, valued too by dog walkers, botanists and drunks, faces hyper-rationalisation. Conceptualising the whole landscape as a work of art itself, the former Island's autonomous pathways and wildflower outcrops will give way to a series of meandering pathways connecting "twelve ellipsoids" inside which will be "Nottingham's largest green space". At present the Island remains untouched except by those that continue to use the space daily whom, by passing through or lingering, deposit their trace on the landscape. These portrait photographs make visible the indices of the traces - the people themselves, situated with in a landscape which they give meaning to. When the Eastside development is completed, as buddleia takes root in the most adverse places, the people that passed through the former Island Site will appropriate their own ways of moving through the new site. Jonathan Watts Click the images below for larger versions: