An Extremely Un-get-atable Place
An Extremely Un-get-atable Place, is a lyrical exploration and re-imagining of the time that George Orwell spent in a remote farmhouse on the Isle of Jura in the Hebrides, where between 1946-1949 he lived and wrote his classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
This is a book about hope, about finding joy in the small things in life and believing in a better future in a world of political turmoil.
In it I revisit Barnhill, the remote farmhouse on the Isle of Jura in The Hebrides in Scotland where George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four – his final novel, an extraordinary gift and a dire warning of the dangers of totalitarianism and political despotism.
Barnhill was Orwell’s escape. His place of hope, a place of peace & calm where he could build a future. Where he would free himself from recent memories of war & carve out time to reflect on his concerns about the resultant fracturing of the world into competing political spheres of influence.
Orwell was dying, but after the untimely death of his wife, Eileen, he was determined to cling on to life to maintain hope and belief in the future, if not for him then for their son and for humanity. He believed in a better future and counsels us against tyrants.
He planted trees, grew vegetables, fished, kept chickens & had visitors galore. His diaries & letters are full of plans for the future.
In a similarly fractious time in world affairs, I too escaped. I was invited to stay at Barnhill and there I made a series of landscape and still life images with my large format 10x8 field camera – the negatives then printed as hand-made silver gelatin prints and toned in strong tea in homage to Orwell’s famous obsession!
The photographs are presented alongside extracts from Orwell's diaries & letters that he wrote during his life on the island.
An Extremely Un-get-atable Place is the first book of ‘An Island Trilogy’ – three monographs to be published over the next two years all made in the Scottish Islands.
An Extremely Un-get-atable Place is published by GOST Books, 2025 - available here.
An Extremely Un-get-atable Place Book available here.
Exhibitions
Media
Do you SEE me? What do You See?
Abdul Aziz Hafiz
Do you SEE me?
What do YOU see?
Do you see the toil and strife, the sweat off my brow?
Uphill the struggles on Saunders Road, near but far from Duke’s Brow
In many worlds my roots do bough
The journeying from distant shores
Leaving me ma to do her own chores
Only at a distance I could weep in grief and sorrow
Do you see my sacrifice, for my child and yours a better morrow
Do you SEE me?
What do YOU see?
“They say the young just want benefits, get paid to sit”
The young act out, push back, but willing still, say how do we do our bit?
Do not snoop as though we are a forgotten people
For we found our place in view of the dome mingled with the church’s steeple
Except for Carol from Cape Verde who awaits her decision
“Black bird in Blackburn, Why not?!” angry at the Home Office suspicion
Do you see my hardship each time comes the recession?
Do you SEE Aisha and Alexei?
What do YOU see?
Aisha’s toughness shrouded by every mother’s dignity
With few words of English, proud for queen and country
Her service to others here being recognised
What about Alexei’s gentility, his first day in Bank Top had he spent
Community, solidarity, safety he found on St Barnabas’ bench
Brother at hand learning how a Blackburner to be
Do you see his gaze looking back at you from a century ago?
Do you SEE the ordinariness of those who stare back at you?
Afzal fascinated by his pigeons’ flight, a tradition perhaps from Punjab
But nay, for factory workers long gone twas ‘release and escape’ from the drab
Look beyond the scullery and the mattress in the ginnal
After years of hard graft I did feel my hearth throbben
‘Tek yer ook’ if in me yourself you cannot see!
© Abdul Aziz Hafiz, 2020