Folly, a book of photographs by Jamie Murray, Out Now

A new book of photographs by QEST Scholar Jamie Murray was published this month by Photo Editions.

The photographs in Folly were born from a series of conversations with individuals who have been incarcerated. Discussions of what had led to punishment, navigating the prison environment and the transition to freedom flowed towards philosophy, ideas of discipline and punishment, intertwined with questions around natural order and spirituality. The resulting allegorical photographs refer—both directly and indirectly—to what was said and how these conversations affected Murray.

“The body of work stemmed from an interest in institutions and isolation. I had just been making work whilst travelling on a Navy ship and I became interested in these spaces which were separated from society. Nearly everyone on the Navy ship had chosen to be in an isolated space (but it still greatly affected them) so I was intrigued to see the effects of a similar space when people had not chosen to be there.”

Murray first began speaking to the individuals in 2017 in an attempt to understand more about their experience with the aim of making a documentary series within a prison. Most had been to numerous prisons over long periods of their life, often multiple times. Murray wanted a record of these meetings and brought along his camera. Some individuals would allow portraits, and others not. As the conversations evolved, so did the project. Most of the photographs were taken as Murray travelled back from where he had met them—often subconsciously influenced by the ideas from their conversations. The encounters led him to reflect upon his own life, choices and history with meandering thoughts and emotions relating to what had been discussed.

The book opens with the image of the visual metaphor of an imposing folly—an ornamental structure of no purpose, both foolish and excessively costly. The following photographs—a pile of coins glistening in the undergrowth, gathered crows, a road leading off the page, a fish gasping for breath outside water, rows of butterfly pupae—are heavy with implied narrative and sequenced to represent an amalgam of the conversations. Throughout the images runs a motif of the relationship between man and nature—co-existence and interference.

“As the conversation moved on, he spoke of re-entering the world and replaced some of the good humour with sincerity. He explained the ease of returning to prison for a lot of them. He looked at me and asked, are you a man or a beast? I questioned if there is a difference between the two. There can be if you want, that’s the butterfly, that’s the aim, it just takes time.“

Jamie Murray received a BA (Hons) in Documentary Photography from the University of Newport, South Wales, and an MA in Photography from UWE, Bristol. He is currently a Lecturer in Photography and he received a QEST Scholarship for photography and printmaking. His work has been exhibited at the Martin Parr Foundation and the Royal Photographic Society, and at festivals including FORMAT and Manifesta 12. Murray’s work has been published in Abridged magazine and the British Journal of Photography, with commissions from Financial Times, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Hot Potato and Port Magazine. Folly is his first monograph.