Ships of Memory

This photo essay presents an approach to post-industrial landscapes through single objects and their motifs. The stimulus for these reflections came from revisiting photographs I took of North Shields Fish Quay, a deindustrialised fishing port in northeast England. The essay combines fieldwork photographs and interviews conducted with the local Association of Retired Fishermen to reveal the material and discursive lingering of ships in North Shields Fish Quay. Drawing on the concept of “surface encounters”, I envision the potential of these industrial objects to intervene between researcher and participant. The essay describes the attentive dialogues that may have emerged between me and the retired fishers through embracing the physicality of these boats rather than what they symbolise. These reflections offer insight for scholars of deindustrialisation and contemporary archaeologists using participant-oriented methods.