[Leica] An English village

["geebeespaw" <geebeespaw@btopenworld.com>]

    While chatting with Bill Clough on IRC #Leica channel,
he mentioned that he had been looking at the photograph of
a village taken for a picture essay on Literary England
that appeared in LIFE Magazine in June, 1943.

   Bill talked about how it seemed an unlikely time for
such a project, how he liked the photograph and even
emailed the text that accompanied the piece. It's taken
from 'A Shropshire Lad' by A.E. Houseman:

Clunton and Clunbury
Clungerford and Clun
Are the quietest places
Under the sun

In valleys of springs and rivers
By Ony and Teme and Clun
The country for easy livers
The quietest under the sun
We still had sorrows to lighten
One could not always be glad....

   Whether is was the photograph, the poem, the
tranquillity of the scene when war was raging elsewhere, or
maybe just Bill's mood at the time, for some reason--in
that way that photographs can--it struck a chord with him.
Clunbury, the village in the photograph, is 120 miles from
my home so I said if I got the chance I would make the trip
and take some photographs to show him how it looked today.

   One thing hadn't changed since 1896 when the poem was
written. It is still the quietest place under the sun. I
never saw a soul except an occasional car and a couple of
bikers. I wandered through the village and around the
churchyard in almost total isolation on a glorious sunny
day. The cottage that was in the process of being thatched
had a 'Marie Celeste' feel about it, almost as if the
thatchers had been whisked away somehow in the middle of
their work. The only sounds came from a nearby rookery and
it added to the slightly eerie atmosphere.

    David E. Scherman was the photographer in 1943 that so captured Bill
Cloughs' imagination and triggered these shots. A fifty nine year self
timer, followed by a remote release from Texas, the LUG is a truly wondrous
place.

http://www.geebeephoto.com/html/clunbury.html


Graham
http://geebeephoto.com






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