Seamus Murphy
Seamus Murphy began photographing Afghanistan in 1994, and his new book A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan, is a classic on the rise of the Taliban and...
Read more ›Bitter Branches
on 04 December 2011Over the next twelve days we will be featuring a new music video
featuring PJ Harvey by Seamus Murphy daily. The accompanying text
by Seamus will give an insight into his thoughts about making the
videos. ENJOY!
Starts out with Keith, the mechanic in Mitcham who has kept my car
le¬gal and alive. Attack seagulls were in Sheringham, Norfolk. The
crowds I shot crouched under an umbrella outside an exit of Oxford
Circus tube station. Inky silhouetted branches in black and white
were shot at the Thames in Westminster, beside the Houses of
Parliament. The hands with roses and the man's hands comforting a
woman were the fu¬neral at Wootton Bassett of a British soldier
killed in Afghanistan. I had been there in the summer and noticed
the grieving families putting roses on the roof of the hearse - a
moment appropriate to lyrics about war widow's arms as "bitter
branches spreading into the world", and could be captured without
intrusion and revealing identities. The hand in the air was a
street preacher in Brixton. Street scenes are in central Manchester
and London. Mick Harvey and John Parish chorus the ending.
PJ Harvey Web Site
England Photo Essay by Seamus Murphy