McGhie, H., 2024.

Close Encounters: A Practice-based Photography Exploration in Collaboration with a Science Communication Organisation in Northumberland International Dark Sky Park

In this practice-based research project and accompanying thesis, funded by the UK's 2017 National Productivity Investment Fund, I investigate how photography can be used in new ways to explore and experience dark skies in Northern England. In partnership with Kielder Observatory Astronomical Society (KOAS), a charitable business and science visitor attraction in Northumberland International Dark Sky Park, in Europe's second-largest area of protected dark skies, I explore how the dark-sky experience can be communicated through alternative aesthetics to starry-sky 'astrophotography' conventions by incorporating experiences of the KOAS communities engaging with Kielder's dark skies. I undertook a five-year research residency at KOAS to test and explore this, negotiating the opportunities and challenges of producing creative practice in partnership with a rural astronomy visitor attraction and charitable business investing in social, environmental and cultural objectives. While testing new photographic encounters with dark skies, I expanded KOAS's public offer and developed new creative means to connect with audiences. I followed a pluralistic methodology combining arts-based research, reflective creative practice and narrative inquiry. Ariella Azoulay's 'civil contract of photography' informed my process, considering the perspectives of the photographer, the photographed and the spectator within the photographic act. I applied and tested Azoulay's theory within a new theoretical framework, the 'relational contract of photography,' merging photographic practice with the roles and vision of a charitable business. Here, constructed photography became a tool to learn about the dark-sky experience, respond to KOAS communities and environment, and for further contemplation on dark skies, when tensions between wild darkness and artificial light activated the sensory and imaginative experience of Kielder's dark forest. Created in dialogue with KOAS's dark-sky communities, the photographic outputs include portraits, landscapes and still life images, a moving image work and a series of 'sonified photographs.' I displayed photographic outputs in Observe, Experiment, Archive, a group contemporary photography exhibition at Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens (November 2019 - January 2020), enabling city centre audiences to access KOAS through my work. I later developed and led Another Dimension, a year-long dissemination of my photography at KOAS (November 2021 - October 2022), including an online exhibition, an 'art and astronomy' event and an outdoor sound trail and exhibition developed at a time when the tourist industry operated with 'social distancing' restrictions brought by the UK's COVID-19 pandemic context. KOAS and its external stakeholders, Forestry England and Kielder Water and Forest Park Development Trust, supported activities for Another Dimension. The creative outputs enhanced KOAS's cultural activity while enabling me to identify a new work model as a photographic practitioner engaging with a charitable business. I have disseminated my research at academic conferences and within a co-authored chapter in an interdisciplinary publication exploring dark-sky places, practices and communities.