The Samye Ling Tibetan Buddhist Monastery is set in the countryside of Southern Scotland, around 16 miles from Lockerbie and 20 miles from the Scotland/England border. Visiting this monastery is like teleporting to another country at another time. This would be the type of place I would definitely visit while abroad. Being warm and sunny certainly helped create the illusion of another time another place, weather we don’t get an awful lot of in Scotland.
I’m confused. After all these years of wanting to visit and photograph Auschwitz, I finally went, and it was indeed a moving experience as you would expect. But it’s also tainted by the realisation that we have already entered into a dark time in the present day that feels every bit as dangerous as the late 1930s. Auschwitz for me stands as a reminder of how dark and despicable humans can be, and that we can never go there again. But we are.
Hartwood Hospital was a mental health hospital until it closed in 1998. It now sits derelict. Nature is reclaiming it day by day. Trees grow inside each of the structures, in some cases taller than the buildings themselves, protruding where roofs once kept out the rain and snow.
Now it sits vacant, with the promise of redevelopment, a promise that grows increasingly doubtful with each passing year. Signs warn of Japanese knotweed on the massive site. Fires break out every few years from would-be arsonists, and who knows what else goes on inside those walls. I visited during a recent snowfall and saw many footprints entering through forced gaps in the security fences.
The railway built access ramps to the local train station many years ago, but who knows if that will ever be used. When you walk these grounds, you might pass a local dog walker, but mostly you are alone with your own thoughts and the sounds of the crows flying in and out of the smashed clock tower. It’s their home now.