Description
Craig Easton – An Extremely Un-Get-Atable Place
Publisher: GOST Books, 2025
Hardcover, 100 pages, English
Size: 33x27cm
New in seal
‘It’s an extremely un-get-atable place, but it’s a nice house and I think I can make it quite comfortable with a little trouble.’—George Orwell
An Extremely Un-get-atable Place is a lyrical reimagining of the time that writer George Orwell lived at Barnhill, a remote farmhouse on the Isle of Jura in Scotland. It was here that Orwell wrote his landmark book Nineteen Eighty-Four—a dire warning of the dangers of totalitarianism and political despotism. Photographer Craig Easton was invited to stay at Barnhill—largely unchanged since Orwell’s time—where he made a series of landscape and still life images. In Easton’s new book, these photographs are presented alongside extracts from Orwell’s letters and diaries written on the island.
George Orwell lived on Jura between 1946 and 1949 accompanied by his housekeeper and son, Richard, who has written the book’s afterword. Orwell sought the solitude of the island whilst battling tuberculosis and writing his final work. Barnhill is extremely difficult to reach, an eight-mile walk from the nearest public road.
Easton was drawn to Jura by the prospect of finding the peace, creative freedom and, most importantly, the hope that Orwell had found there during a period of global turmoil. Rediscovering his love of the craft and beauty of the medium, Easton made a series of photographs around the house and the landscape of north Jura with his large-format 10 x 8 field camera. The resultant images celebrate the small details in life and the joy of looking deeply at a special place. This joy is summed up in the opening paragraphs of the book taken from Orwell’s essay ‘Some thoughts on the Common Toad’.
The interior photographs of household items conjure up images of the simplicity of Orwell’s life—the stove and teapot, a shaving mirror, the worn carpet he trod, a coal shovel and tools hung in a shed. Collectively they create an atmospheric vision of Orwell’s time on the island and the mood, desire and hope he experienced. Upon returning from the island, Easton printed the negatives as hand-made silver gelatin prints and toned them in strong tea in homage to Orwell’s famous obsession.
‘Craig’s finely crafted photographs capture the tenor of the times with their windswept portrayal of the lonely but beautiful landscape that is Jura. In many ways, they encapsulate my father’s life between the many visits of friends and relatives that came to Barnhill. A lot of the time, as he battled to finish his book while enveloped in cigarette smoke, he would see from his bedroom window the great herds of red deer that roamed freely on Jura, perhaps conjuring up the desire and hope that he too could escape the disease that was slowly eating into his lungs. Ah well, ‘let’s have another rollup!’ —Richard Blair
