Throughout a year, Magnum photographer, Chris Steele-Perkins
photographed at Holkham Hall, a 23,000 acre estate set on the
Norfolk coast with a history stretching back to the 1700s. He
photographed not only the various activities there, from hunting
and shooting through to concerts and weddings, but also the groups
of workers that form the backbone of day to day life on the Estate.
Holkham combines tradition with more contemporary activities such
as pop and classical concerts, and businesses such as the rental
and sale of holiday caravans. It was this mix of past and present,
alongside the fact that the Hall was a lived-in family home, that
most interested Steele-Perkins. For him the challenge was to look
at the reality of Holkham, and explore where that reality
overlapped with the cliches we cling to. Country estates bedevil
the British imagination, and much of the rest of the world's too.
Perhaps this is not surprising given that they feature in so many
of our novels, historical films and TV dramas - Downton Abbey for
example, or Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day. The focus of
these fictional accounts, however, is almost always resolutely
fixed on the past, yet the estates themselves continue. They are
institutions with both a past and a future. Whilst there are many
photographic projects on country life - from hunting through to
country house gardens or the art collections - there is very little
that gives a rounder view of life on an estate. An estate is more
than an old house, it is a farm, a business, an eco-system, a
community, a venue, a confluence of history - a world in microcosm.
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