The Last Living Rose

Over 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!

I set out to shoot most of the films as stills, with occasional pieces of moving footage, but the reverse happened. As the trip progressed I ended up concentrating far more on moving images. The aim was always to find a visual language that worked with the music of each song, taking its melody and beat as the guide rather than the lyrics. The stills in the film feature Norfolk a lot, which doesn't surprise me, it's an inspirational place. A picture hang¬ing on the wall of a house on the north Norfolk coast, the head of a charismatic horseman out walking his land, the hand of a farmer baffled by my request to photograph his unruly garden. On the way to knock¬ing on his door I spotted a doll on the barbecue and the pan full of leaves, which made me hesitate. After chatting with him I took a short ramble through his land, coming back to my car to find him nervously jotting down my number plate. He told me apologetically of stories he had heard of people going about the countryside getting signatures and then trying to swindle them out of land and possessions. Apocryphal perhaps, but living alone on a farm you can understand his fears.
There's the road map I used on my travels, taken early in the morning on my bed at a guesthouse in Wells, Somerset. It seemed to have emerged from dreams of travels, and probably had. That's Barry McQueen in the top hat, the great MC at the Tower Ballroom in Blackpool, proudly showing me around the Tower and showing me where they had kept the elephants and other animals when they ran circuses at the Tower in the old days. A young woman in a late night bar in Soho, London. A plastic bag outside a corner shop in Toller Lane, Bradford. A pheasant flying near Preston and a lady waiting for her bus just outside Leeds. The weary horse who would have us believe he's had a hard day's work is at Blakeney, Norfolk. It began as a still photograph of a duck pond at sunset, which had me chuckling at its kitsch 'Olde England' quality. I realised that the horse with his slow saunter might just walk the length of the path and leave the frame, and it might be something useful, so I flipped the camera to movie mode. I had no idea at the time if, or where, it might be used in the films. These films are not scripted.

PJ Harvey Web Site

www.pjharvey.net

England Photo Essay by Seamus Murphy

http://www.viiphoto.com/showstory.php?nID=1230