Deeds Not Words
2011
Hardback photo and text book, accompanied by a letter, with unique dissemination. Copies of the book were sent out free and exclusively to its intended primary audience, which included: The land and environmental services department of each of the 433 local council authorities in the United Kingdom, Environmental, legal, and scientific bodies in the UK and worldwide.
'Deeds Not Words' is not available commercially. Only certain images from the book, ones which depict quotidian life in Corby, are reproduced on this website.
In the town of Corby, Northamptonshire, 18 children, conceived between the autumns of 1985 and 1998, were born with birth defects. These defects, in the main shortened or missing arms, legs, and fingers, were said to have been caused as a result of the children's mothers' ingestion or inhalation of harmful substances generated during the council's reclamation of Corby steelworks after the closure of the huge plant in the early 1980's with the collapse of British Steel. As a result there was a court case between the 18 children, collectively known as the claimants, and Corby Borough Council.
For three years I researched this court case, known in the press as 'The Corby 16'. The case brings up many issues concerning the handling of toxic waste, the treatment of landfill sites in the UK, and the potential of toxins found in these sites to cause birth defects.
The outcome of the court case has now been decided. However, many of the groundbreaking legal, medical, and scientific findings from the case remained unpublished. 'Deeds Not Words' attempts to redress this, explaining the pressing environmental issues brought up by the case, specifically how improper land reclamation can potentially result in birth defects in local populations.
My photographs, interviews with the claimants, and the conclusions offered by the specialist witnesses from the case, are all unique to, and have their origin in, this publication.
The photographs in the book not only portray two of the claimants from the court case, but also provide a portrait of Corby as it is now. The identity of Corby is still to this day bound up with an idea of Scottishness; with its origins in the mass migration of Scots to Corby seeking employment in the steelworks - the ultimately improper reclamation of whose land was proved to be the most probable cause of the birth defects. Even the typical accent of Corby is still described as lowland Scots.
The whole character of the town and its people is still defined by steel, and the steel industry which formed it. It was important to me to make a new type of photobook which investigated that character; which did not ignore the visual nature of the town, its Scottish roots, or the history of the mills; or separate these from the case. The court case was concerned with a damaging legacy of that industry, and the purpose of this book is to make a positive contribution to understanding the issues which the case brings up. These issues centre on environmental toxicology, birth defect clusters, and ethical responsibility.
The objective is that recipients of the book re-examine their own ideas and procedures concerning land reclamation. I hope that local councils, for example, will use this book as a manual; a tool to be employed in meetings and policy-making. I trust that they will think seriously about what the book tells us, and that particular attention will be paid to the scientific evidence and to the specialist conclusions. This textual information is coupled with my new documentary images in order to deliver the message in a particular form.
The aim of the book is to effect a real policy change regarding land reclamation, and to alter the attitude towards the disposal and management of toxic waste in the UK.
Selected images from Deeds Not Words book
