Doffy Weir

Doffy Weir

Doffy Weir has photographed the remote and neglected corners of E. London since 1980. Often concentrating on the micro, she creates landscapes of eerie beauty and ambiguous scale. Since her 2011 IceSpace photographic exhibition, she has produced a number of movies from photographs taken on walks along canals and rivers, including FreezeFrame 2012, Confluence (a journey downriver) 2013, Lesney's Ghosts 2015 (a silent film made for live improvised musical performance), 50 Shades of Grays 2015 and Concurrence (another journey downriver) 2016.
“I enjoy the process of editing hundreds of photographs into films that feel just like taking someone for a walk to see things they normally pass by. I want to slow down the madness, taking time to look longer and see more.”

Guitarist Dave Draper has lived in E. London since the 1970s, experimenting with hacksaw blades, circuit bending, looping and field recordings. Discovery of Congolese rumba and the London Musicians' Collective led to African dance bands, the Invisible String Quartet and tours in Europe. He has composed soundtracks for all of Doffy Weir's movies, combining guitar-based improvisation, electronic manipulation and found sounds.

“I've long thought that the abstract nature of some of my work would fit Doffy's images perfectly, and am so pleased to have the opportunity to collaborate with her.”

Their film Confluence explores changing and contradictory landscapes of the Thames Estuary from Silvertown to the North Sea in a visual essay of impressionistic photographs taken over three years. A slow journey on film, gives a sense of taking a walk, looking around and absorbing the all the contrasts of old and new, beautiful and ugly, industrial dereliction and accelerating regeneration, waste re-cycling plants and tranquil, remote, ancient wastelands. Ever changing landscapes are both urban and rural, yet neither of these.

Dave Draper's haunting soundtrack of original composition and field recordings accompanies the film.

Where to see


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