“The mother pasted up this picture, something pretty to look at she said. I never moved it whenever she died … long time ago now”

What once seemed changeless and set like concrete against the flow of years suddenly tumbles and is swept away. Farms that for years turned their earth with the seasons now stand empty and echo. The dampness reclaims plaster, stone, cotton, wood and metal; digesting the relics of lives lived and now over.

Standing here now – carefully stepping through the clues of a man’s life, a story emerges. The story of a working day, of evening’s rest; of what occupied the hand and the mind.

These pictures were made in an abandoned farm in the south of County Down, Northern Ireland in July 2006.