Military-Pastoral Geometries

This project draws together images of the British landscape and the unseen geometric, volumetric shapes of military airspaces. The images attempt to convey how invisible military spaces overlap and permeate the spaces and places we live in. It is, therefore, easily possibly to stand within the parameters of a designated Danger Areas or under one of the vast Military Training Areas (MTA) across the UK sovereign territory. The isometric projections shown here represent the airspaces over or surrounding the landscapes shown in the photographs.  

Brecklands II: East Anglia Military Training Area, C-print 99x66cm. 

The Brecklands is home to a number of Air Force bases (British and US) which regularly use the East Anglia MTA for training fighter pilots and for transit to other training areas across the country.  Vast in size, it extends over much of East Anglia, Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire.

Shoeburyness: Expect low-frequency airblasts, C-print 99x66cm. 

MoD Shoeburyness (which includes the whole of Foulness island on the Thames estuary) is used for a range of weapons testing activities but also the controlled destruction of out-of-date weapons. As such, it has one of the highest and more complex airspace Danger Areas to prevent potentially hazardous incursions by commercial and civilian aircraft.

Lakenheath: Request MATZ penetration, C-print 99x66cm.

RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall are twin bases in East Anglia used by the United States Air Force. The bases are surrounded and protected by co-joined circular airspaces - Military Aerodrome Traffic Zones (MATZ) - covering large areas of the regional landscape.

Brecklands: This will be a 36hr FIBUA combat operation, C-print 99x66cm. 

The area known to the military as STANTA, also in the Brecklands, is used for combined combat and air training and has a large Danger Area airspace to keep civilian air traffic out but extends over non-military land by a considerable distance.

The Wash: High angle dives and loft/toss bombing attacks, C-print 99x66cm

The Wash is a vast tidal estuary of tributaries, mud flats, and low-lying marsh lands. It is also used as a bombing range for NATO and British aircraft which regularly pass over at very low altitude releasing inert payloads or firing acoustic signals at targets in the distance.