A Country Kind of Silence continues my inward exploration of the feelings surrounding my sense of identity. A feeling that belonging is not so much unattainable as difficult to understand. I still hesitate when someone asks where I am from, a question undoubtedly prompted by my unusual accent. England has been my adopted home for some time now, 26 years to be exact. Yet moving away from where my heart is rooted has had a profound effect on me. Feelings of unease and uncertainty have always accompanied me, and many are linked to the constant changes I see around me; these developments have often mirrored a change within myself as time passes. I wanted A Country Kind of Silence to respond to this change: in perception and in my personal sense of self. I want to celebrate this period of transition with images that convey a quiet calm, a moment of silence capturing various motifs from the past before they are lost and forgotten. I associate these visual cues with my adopted sense of identity: I am always looking for cultural symbols to which I can anchor it. I often think about my relationship with the photographs I took, both those selected and those left out, and how each helps me understand the place I inhabit. The pink and blue tones just off a Kent high street and the faded peach hues of Brighton hairdressers say much about who we were and how we did things, but also about where we are now and where we are heading. Hand-lettered signs in Great Yarmouth encouraged me to make that photograph: signs like these represent a time and a place and everything in between, reminders that these places once thrived. We pass them often, sometimes daily, paying little attention except when their deterioration contrasts with the new. For me, these relics narrate my own understanding of place: they have become a kind of roadmap to understanding who I am, where I am and what my surroundings mean. I am always assessing change, updating my knowledge to reinforce my sense of belonging. The urban landscape is entirely of our making and tells us so much: we plan and build, harvest and destroy, repeating the process as we pass through. It is easy to forget that many of these things still bear the influence of the past: they tell us much about ourselves while caught in time, surviving, struggling and sometimes simply existing. — Ian Howorth.