christopher
jelley
poet
technologist
Welcome
My most recent works (2023) have involved scratch building a medium format camera.
Photographs in the gallery below are all direct positives, so no negative just a plate in the box. This work is raw and revealing, it is unpredictable, hard to fathom and exudes proper old style magic!
The next stage of my works will begin to investigate wet plate collodion, 4x5"slides to then be able to create emulsion prints on cotton rag paper. But for the now, I am still building the camera, dark room and gathering the tools to capture a confusion in silver nitrate.
Introducing . . .
Previous Works
My projects often thread the strands of place, location and writing in new and curious ways. Sometimes these employ fresh new tech (Poetry Pin / Storywalks) other times just a book in a box (Lynmouth Pavilion - Poetry Box Project) Some works celebrate creative literacy (Coleridge Way - QR Code Poetry) others are just for fun.
They may involve folk lore and traditional storytelling (Hidden Histories Secret Stories) or creative writing workshops (Poetry Rambles)
And sometimes, just sometimes they manage to turn whole cities and landscapes into playgrounds for the word! (Ledbury.poetrypin.info , Exeter and Tarka Trail Poetry Pin)
Other projects have partnered with Jackie Morris and Seven Fables to create The Lost Words Storywalks trails and also new films for Penguin Random House The Lost Spells international book launch. The lost spells was published 1st October 2020 and is the sister book to The Lost Words by Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane. See the Seven Fables Vimeo channel here.
During 2021 I worked on oral history trails with Heritage South West, plus a landscape poetry project with Exeter University aswell as a new bee labyrinth in Priorswood for the Priorswood Pollinators Project with Somerset Art Works.
Additional 2022 works took the England Coast Path Storywalks, a series of hidden history heritage trails, into the Ordnance Survey app - Secret Stories.
Follow - WORD WORKS and NEWS tabs above for pages about these projects.
