Cutting Cane, Carrying History

Sugarcane fields in Jamaica

In my series Intended for Jamaica, I turn my lens to the contemporary sugar harvest, using photography to explore how the past continues to speak through the present, echoing Stuart Hall’s idea that history is always in dialogue with now. Rooted in a careful awareness of colonial image-making, this work resists erasure by centring today’s agricultural workers, not as echoes of history, but as people whose labour sustains their lives and communities, anchoring their continued presence on the land.

Stuart Hall in The Fateful Triangle: Race, Ethnicity, Nation:

“The past is not behind us, but continues to speak to us. It speaks to us not as a voice from the past, but as a living force in the present.”

Intended for Jamaica was an artist's response to the sale of Boulton and Watt Steam engines from Soho Foundry, near Birmingham, to sugar plantations in Jamaica during the early part of the nineteenth century. The artist used original archives held in the Boulton and Watt Collection to trace the sales to sites in Jamaica, exploring the connection to land, sugar and communities in Jamaica, including thinking about environmental legacies and reparatory justice.