Helen McGhie
I am Senior Lecturer in Photography at the School of Digital Arts and teach within the BA (Hons) Photography and MA Photography programmes. I encourage students to explore enterprising approaches to creative practice, including responding to different public contexts and audiences. I encourage collaborative environments for students and support live briefs within my teaching.
My practice-based research investigates how photographic practice can foster meaningful relationships with partners and communities, as explored within my practice-based PhD, Close Encounters: A Practice-based Photography Exploration in Collaboration with a Science Communication Organisation in Northumberland International Dark Sky Park (University of Sunderland, 2024) investigated in partnership with Kielder Observatory, a dark-sky charity and visitor attraction. Funded by the National Productivity Investment Fund (AHRC), this research tested what mutual benefits emerge when a creative photographic practitioner and dark sky visitor attraction collaborate. I listened to dark-sky communities, made photographs informed by stories and displayed creative outputs catalysing new creative encounters with dark skies in Northumberland to support Kielder Observatory’s charitable vision.
I co-wrote the chapter, ‘Creative Approaches to Dark Skies Research: A Dialogue Between Two Artist-researchers’ with interdisciplinary researcher Natalie Marr, published in Dark Skies: Places, Practices, Communities, edited by Nick Dunn and Tim Edensor (Routledge, 2024). My exhibitions include Another Dimension, Kielder Forest (Kielder, 2022); Observe, Experiment, Archive, Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens (Sunderland, 2019-20); Writing Skyscapes, Nottingham Contemporary (Nottingham, 2020); 209 Women, Portcullis House (London, 2018) and Hello Future! Talent’s Archive at Onassis Cultural Centre (Athens, 2015). My photography has contributed to creative publications, including A Book for Research that is Art (Northumbria-Sunderland Centre for Doctoral Research, 2021), Monthly Photography (South Korea, 2020) and Madam and Eve: Women Portraying Women, edited by Liz Rideal and Kathleen Soriano (Laurence King Publishing, 2020).
My practice-based research investigates how photographic practice can foster meaningful relationships with partners and communities, as explored within my practice-based PhD, Close Encounters: A Practice-based Photography Exploration in Collaboration with a Science Communication Organisation in Northumberland International Dark Sky Park (University of Sunderland, 2024) investigated in partnership with Kielder Observatory, a dark-sky charity and visitor attraction. Funded by the National Productivity Investment Fund (AHRC), this research tested what mutual benefits emerge when a creative photographic practitioner and dark sky visitor attraction collaborate. I listened to dark-sky communities, made photographs informed by stories and displayed creative outputs catalysing new creative encounters with dark skies in Northumberland to support Kielder Observatory’s charitable vision.
I co-wrote the chapter, ‘Creative Approaches to Dark Skies Research: A Dialogue Between Two Artist-researchers’ with interdisciplinary researcher Natalie Marr, published in Dark Skies: Places, Practices, Communities, edited by Nick Dunn and Tim Edensor (Routledge, 2024). My exhibitions include Another Dimension, Kielder Forest (Kielder, 2022); Observe, Experiment, Archive, Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens (Sunderland, 2019-20); Writing Skyscapes, Nottingham Contemporary (Nottingham, 2020); 209 Women, Portcullis House (London, 2018) and Hello Future! Talent’s Archive at Onassis Cultural Centre (Athens, 2015). My photography has contributed to creative publications, including A Book for Research that is Art (Northumbria-Sunderland Centre for Doctoral Research, 2021), Monthly Photography (South Korea, 2020) and Madam and Eve: Women Portraying Women, edited by Liz Rideal and Kathleen Soriano (Laurence King Publishing, 2020).
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Thesis Chapters by Helen McGhie
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.
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.
Books by Helen McGhie
A Book for Research that is Art brings together seven researchers and makers whose practices sit at the intersection of art and craft thinking and digital making. The volume connects makers whose practices are finding new ways to work within their discipline. Concerned with new forms of materiality and processes of making, their work is defining a new language that reinvents art and craft skills, techniques, patterns, and materials primarily through the augmentation and integration of digital technology. Their work demonstrates the creative expression that can be derived from an exchange of knowledge between the new and the traditional. The works no longer solely exist in the role of the hand or in physical activity but also lie in the realm of human impetus and intent. A Book for Research that is Art shows how through the digital shifts in society, artists and makers are redefining the conceptual core of their practice as they create forms, motion, and spatial emulations that are directly informed by technology.
Conference Presentations by Helen McGhie
Kielder Observatory is an off-grid facility in Kielder Forest, in England’s largest human-made woodland. Through arts-based research, narrative inquiry and reflective practice, I encountered dark-sky communities, photographed at night and slept under the stars. Whilst a ‘built’ forest, Kielder’s vibrant species of birds, mosses and insects contributed to creative outputs in unexpected ways, marking outdoor exhibited images and enhancing a ‘sonified photograph’ sound trail. When disseminating work through public events and ‘art’ walking tours, I learned how creativity in the dark forest connects human and more-than-human communities through “knowing as you go” (Ingold, 2000, pp. 228-231), where wandering and dwelling enabled learning under dark skies.
Ingold, T. (2000) The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge.
https://ecopedagogies.cargo.site/
My paper shares my experience as a female practice-based researcher working in partnership with Kielder Observatory (KOAS), Northumberland to find new ways of visualising dark skies, disrupting an official history of Astrophotography (Holborn, 2019) that emerged from ‘male pioneers’ including Draper, Whipple and Herschel. My work offers alternative stories of dwelling under dark skies from a woman’s perspective to disrupt these histories, shedding light on hidden, female encounters with dark skies through arts-based research (Leavy, 2020) and creative reflective practice (Candy, 2019).
Practice-based research was conducted in two phases; I created images (portraits, landscapes, still lives) before displaying them to diverse audiences—including KOAS astronomers—in two contexts; the first at Sunderland Museum and Winter Garden (NEPN, 2019-20) informed the second outdoor display at Kielder Forest (Kielder Observatory, 2022). The same images were displayed; in the museum, I used a traditional framed/mounted display; outdoors, large-scale banners were tied to trees accompanied by ‘sonified photography’, ‘eerie’ audio made from photographic data, shifting science-communication from a rational narrative to an imaginative, disconcerting encounter.
Whilst disrupting the conventions of historic and contemporary Astrophotography practice, originally made to ‘objectively’ collect light as an image, my images focused on the density of darkness and my experience of the irrational night. Photographic outcomes were ongoing, ‘performing’ differently in each site. In Sunderland Museum—a place of knowledge setup by a local male society—my perspective proposed a new, de-masculinised vision. Dialogical encounters with audiences—including male astronomers—invited the ‘spectator to take part’ (Azoulay, 2008) with image outcomes through live debates where new knowledge was gathered, through stakeholder responses to my proposed, alternative visualisation. This shifted thought beyond valued traditions of Astrophotography as a sublime construction (Kessler, 2012), to personal, de-masculinised explorations of cosmic darkness, based on memory, encounter, fear and fascination.
References:
Azoulay, A. (2008) The civil contract of photography. New York: Zone Books.
Candy, L. (2019) The Creative Reflective Practitioner: Research Through Making and Practice. London: Routledge Holborn, M. (2019) Sun and Moon: A Story of Astronomy, Photography and Cartography. Illustrated edition. London: Phaidon Press.
Kessler, E. (2012) Picturing the cosmos: Hubble Space Telescope images and the astronomical sublime. Minneapolis, Minn, Bristol: University of Minnesota Press
Kielder Observatory (2022) Another Dimension outdoor photography exhibit. Available at: https://kielderobservatory.org/news/latest-news/235-another-dimension-outdoor-photography-exhibit (Accessed: 26 April 2023).
Leavy, P. (2020) Method meets art: arts-based research practice. Third edition. New York: The Guilford Press.
NEPN (2019) Observe Experiment Archive. Available at: https://northeastphoto.net/project/observe-experiment-archive/ (Accessed: 26 April 2023).
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.
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.
A Book for Research that is Art brings together seven researchers and makers whose practices sit at the intersection of art and craft thinking and digital making. The volume connects makers whose practices are finding new ways to work within their discipline. Concerned with new forms of materiality and processes of making, their work is defining a new language that reinvents art and craft skills, techniques, patterns, and materials primarily through the augmentation and integration of digital technology. Their work demonstrates the creative expression that can be derived from an exchange of knowledge between the new and the traditional. The works no longer solely exist in the role of the hand or in physical activity but also lie in the realm of human impetus and intent. A Book for Research that is Art shows how through the digital shifts in society, artists and makers are redefining the conceptual core of their practice as they create forms, motion, and spatial emulations that are directly informed by technology.
Kielder Observatory is an off-grid facility in Kielder Forest, in England’s largest human-made woodland. Through arts-based research, narrative inquiry and reflective practice, I encountered dark-sky communities, photographed at night and slept under the stars. Whilst a ‘built’ forest, Kielder’s vibrant species of birds, mosses and insects contributed to creative outputs in unexpected ways, marking outdoor exhibited images and enhancing a ‘sonified photograph’ sound trail. When disseminating work through public events and ‘art’ walking tours, I learned how creativity in the dark forest connects human and more-than-human communities through “knowing as you go” (Ingold, 2000, pp. 228-231), where wandering and dwelling enabled learning under dark skies.
Ingold, T. (2000) The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge.
https://ecopedagogies.cargo.site/
My paper shares my experience as a female practice-based researcher working in partnership with Kielder Observatory (KOAS), Northumberland to find new ways of visualising dark skies, disrupting an official history of Astrophotography (Holborn, 2019) that emerged from ‘male pioneers’ including Draper, Whipple and Herschel. My work offers alternative stories of dwelling under dark skies from a woman’s perspective to disrupt these histories, shedding light on hidden, female encounters with dark skies through arts-based research (Leavy, 2020) and creative reflective practice (Candy, 2019).
Practice-based research was conducted in two phases; I created images (portraits, landscapes, still lives) before displaying them to diverse audiences—including KOAS astronomers—in two contexts; the first at Sunderland Museum and Winter Garden (NEPN, 2019-20) informed the second outdoor display at Kielder Forest (Kielder Observatory, 2022). The same images were displayed; in the museum, I used a traditional framed/mounted display; outdoors, large-scale banners were tied to trees accompanied by ‘sonified photography’, ‘eerie’ audio made from photographic data, shifting science-communication from a rational narrative to an imaginative, disconcerting encounter.
Whilst disrupting the conventions of historic and contemporary Astrophotography practice, originally made to ‘objectively’ collect light as an image, my images focused on the density of darkness and my experience of the irrational night. Photographic outcomes were ongoing, ‘performing’ differently in each site. In Sunderland Museum—a place of knowledge setup by a local male society—my perspective proposed a new, de-masculinised vision. Dialogical encounters with audiences—including male astronomers—invited the ‘spectator to take part’ (Azoulay, 2008) with image outcomes through live debates where new knowledge was gathered, through stakeholder responses to my proposed, alternative visualisation. This shifted thought beyond valued traditions of Astrophotography as a sublime construction (Kessler, 2012), to personal, de-masculinised explorations of cosmic darkness, based on memory, encounter, fear and fascination.
References:
Azoulay, A. (2008) The civil contract of photography. New York: Zone Books.
Candy, L. (2019) The Creative Reflective Practitioner: Research Through Making and Practice. London: Routledge Holborn, M. (2019) Sun and Moon: A Story of Astronomy, Photography and Cartography. Illustrated edition. London: Phaidon Press.
Kessler, E. (2012) Picturing the cosmos: Hubble Space Telescope images and the astronomical sublime. Minneapolis, Minn, Bristol: University of Minnesota Press
Kielder Observatory (2022) Another Dimension outdoor photography exhibit. Available at: https://kielderobservatory.org/news/latest-news/235-another-dimension-outdoor-photography-exhibit (Accessed: 26 April 2023).
Leavy, P. (2020) Method meets art: arts-based research practice. Third edition. New York: The Guilford Press.
NEPN (2019) Observe Experiment Archive. Available at: https://northeastphoto.net/project/observe-experiment-archive/ (Accessed: 26 April 2023).