Bonfire-A Journey – Russell Thompson
“From Geezers to Guizers.”
— Russell Thompson – Reviewer
Teresa Neal’s latest book is bathed in orange and black. It is predominantly a photographic record of Seaford bonfire parade with a nod to Northium and Robertsbridge, one of many quasi-cabbalistic processions that take place in Sussex towns and villages around the time of Guy Fawkes night (they’re mostly staggered so as not to clash). The photos very much take an in-the-thick-of-it viewpoint, capturing the uncharted corners of the event and its build-up. Hence the ‘journey’ of the subtitle: apart from a brief postscript dealing with a ‘morning bonfire due to inclement weather’ that took place one year, this is a chronological trip, from the building of the pyre to the next-day aftermath.
Neal’s strengths are in dealing with shapes and depth of field. We see the aforementioned morning blaze framed by the legs of an operative standing on a scaffold. Elsewhere we follow the diagonals (gaze, arm, knife) as a caterer slices a bonfire-shaped cake – all brown icing and Cadbury’s Flakes – in the refreshment tent. Contrast is another strong suit: Seaford’s reclaimed land and flat-roofed 1970s housing provides a bizarre backdrop to the Pink Floyd-inspired effigies that were evidently the theme of the event in 2019. The glow-sticks illuminating a group of musicians belie their historical fancy-dress.
Fire, of course, also has a transformative quality – stack of pallets to dead ashes – and this is another part of the journey. The photos chart other changes along the way: things always look different at night or when strangely lit. The familiar faces from the pub take on new, masked identities; geezers become guizers. One participant takes the transformative idea literally: one half of her face is au naturel, the other’s plastered in skull make-up. Opposite her, a colleague has gone further, losing all human features under a helmet that is half heraldic bird and half totem-pole.
The best images in the book are those in which things get pared down to basics – outlines, atmosphere, broad strokes of colour: a hammer-headed silhouette against a roaring fire; a sky full of sparks, whizzing above the roofs and revellers; a pirate bending down to speak to a junior pirate; an impressionistic, double-exposed blur of street signs and shopfronts; streetlights that look like flecks of fire and vice versa; a longboat burning in a scene more reminiscent of Shetland’s Up Helly Aa event than anything one might expect to find at the foot of the South Downs.
Whilst Seaford’s bonfire celebrations are a different kettle of fish to the crowd-pulling Saturnalia that takes place in neighbouring Lewes, this book is a reminder that they have a homespun quality that counts for a great deal in community terms. And they have something else, too (the clue’s in the name): the sea. Although it never actually appears in any of these photos, its presence is felt in the sea-wind that whisks the fireworks, fans the flames, and ensures that all four elements come together once a year in this most quietly confident of Sussex towns.
Russell Thompson 2022
