Walking Home: photographs

Image credit Leeds University Library

The digital Walking Home files contain over 200 photographs which were taken by Simon Armitage and fellow walkers during the Pennine Way walk. 30 of these photographs were chosen for the published book, and the choice of these images is instructive. Only five of the photographs contain images of people. Four include Simon Armitage and one is of a poetry reading-audience in Glossop.

Practical as well as aesthetic reasons determined the photographs that were chosen. The photographs had to be suitable to print in black and white, for example. Armitage also made the decision to not give the photographs captions. This made the meanings of some of the photographs ambiguous, unlike those found in traditional travel guides. Instead the photographs acted like the images used by writers including W.G. Sebald (Rings of Saturn) and Ted Hughes (Fay Godwin's black and white photographs used in Remains of Elmet.'