Something Rich & Strange is the penultimate of four works, which tell the story of the sinking of a British merchant ore carrier during WW2. Together they mine the spaces between factual events, evidence, and outcomes, and those occupied by human emotions, in their expressions of fear, loss, longing and remembrance. In this series, collodion chemigrams imagine the resting place of the SS Fircrest, one of more than 3500 Allied merchant ships sunk during the Battle of the Atlantic. Loaded with 8,000 tonnes of Bell Island iron ore, the ship was torpedoed on her return from Newfoundland to the Tees in August 1940, sinking immediately with all lives lost. Eight decades on, natural forces continue the wrecking process, microbes colonise and consume as the ship suffers a sea change, gradually returning to its elemental form. Bejewelled and gilded with creeping silver fractal fronds and mother-of-pearl eddies, these imagined underwater terrains were made in an act of mediative remembrance of the crew, whose grave lies in the waters of the North Atlantic. ‘Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange’ (The Tempest, Shakespeare) Collodion and silver on glass, from a series of 40.

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About
Jo de Banzie is a UK based photographic artist, employing the materiality of historic and experimental process to explore themes of trauma, war and loss. Often commemorative in nature, her work combines archive, oral history and the imagined to create visual narratives, as seen through a female gaze. Underpinned by historical research, a conceptual, process-led approach assists in visualising the unseen, and allows space for chance and serendipity, qualities central to work born of memory and imagination. Following a career in documentary portraiture, Jo returned to her roots in analogue practice to combine a knowledge of historic and alternative process with an innate interest in storytelling and social history. She is a graduate of The London College of Communication’s Photojournalism and Documentary Masters programme, and her work is held in held in the National Art Library Collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

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