Lindow Manchester

A new photography exhibition Lindow Moss: A Place of Finding by Stephen Vaughan, opens at The Manchester Museum on 13 December 2008. The exhibition documents the landscape at Lindow Moss, the mysterious place where the preserved body of Lindow Man was found.

Over a period of more than four years, through the changing seasons, the photographer regularly returned to Lindow Moss in order to photograph the trackway that runs through the centre of the peat bog, as well as the ‘peat-rooms’ that sub-divide the landscape on either side.

At the centre of the bog, and on its periphery, the photographs focus on the slow passage of time in the landscape – from small changes in the contemporary surface, to the revealed layers of distant centuries.

Stephen Vaughan has said: ‘for me, the vivid representation of the ‘place of finding’ is vital in order to connect the body to its original resting place. My photographs aim to provide a definitive and rich record of the landscape of Lindow Man’s deposit and discovery.’

The digging of peat has taken place on Lindow Moss for many years. It is being excavated so intensively that the landscape is rapidly disappearing. The primary purpose of Vaughan’s photographs arises from an urgent desire to record this ‘place of finding’, before it is completely emptied and destroyed.

Stephen Vaughan has exhibited in galleries and museums both in the UK and internationally. His most recent work Ultima Thule – is currently on display at Impressions Gallery, Bradford. As well as being a photographic image-maker Vaughan also lectures in Photography at the University of Plymouth. Earlier this year he was awarded an Arts Council England Individual Artist Award.

Lindow Moss: A Place of Finding was nominated for the Santa Fe Prize for Photography in 2005.

The Manchester Museum was Highly Commended in the Large Visitor Attraction category of the Manchester Tourism Awards 2008

The Manchester Museum
Open: Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 5pm, Sunday, Monday and Bank Holidays 11am – 4pm with FREE ENTRY
The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL
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