Duncan Petrie - Post-History

Glimpses and layers of time, what will remain, walking, beauty, palimpsest, AI art, and clothespins are all on the mind of London-based photographer and writer Duncan Petrie.

Duncan explores nature in the human landscape, and what the world might look like when we are gone. His images, found on long walks, are a sort of synecdoche: from a single frame, a single point of punctum, they construct a world. He seeks simple images in order to strip them of their context, and to allow the viewer to peer at the world between them. He holds a 1st class degree in Marine and Natural History Photography from Falmouth University.

Takeaways

1. Always book the tickets the day before. It’s important to make it easy to fit the creative bits into your life. 
2. Photography is a collaboration with the world.
3. Look! See!
4. The future, the end of history, can be beautiful.
5. Look at this world that we have built and notice what things might outlive us and what things are very temporary.

Duncan Petrie on Instagram

Duncan Petrie on YouTube

Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes

Beauty in Photography, Robert Adams

This American Life

Ursula Le Guin

The Worm Ouroboros, E. R. Eddison

The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle

Piranesi, Susanna Clark

Lud-in-the-Midst, Hope Mirrlees