Walking Home: photographs, a visual narrative

The choice of photographs and decision not to include captions make the visual narrative of Walking Home very different to its written narrative. In a piece for Countryfile Armitage wrote how the final book differed to his initial conception: rather than focussing on his childhood memories of the hills and his relationship to the north of England it had 'turned out to be about people and place, about the communities who welcomed me and about some of the peaks and moors which did everything in their power to block my progress.'

In contrast, the visual narrative of the book privileges the non-human over the human, and the uninhabited over the inhabited. It positions Armitage and his fellow walkers as temporary presences on the landscape and distances the Pennine Way path from the villages it passes through.

Image credit Leeds University Library