The Intersection of Rivers Caldew and Eden

Intersection of Rivers Caldew and Eden.  From series 'Borderland' 1993 John Darwell is a much awarded, independent British photographer whose work expresses his interest in social and industrial change, concern for the environment, and the depiction of mental health. For almost three decades, his work has been exhibited and published widely, both nationally and internationally, including exhibitions in London, the USA, Mexico, South America and the Canary Islands. It is featured in a number of important collections including the National Museum of Media/Sun Life Collection in Bradford, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. His varied projects, that explore the external and internal landscapes of the contemporary world,  include a trilogy on notorious sites marked by nuclear destruction or nuclear pollution (e.g. Hiroshima, Sellafield, Chernobyl); projects that evoke changes in the industrial landscapes (Manchester and Stockport clothing industry, Port of Liverpool, Manchester Docks); projects on the impact of foot and mouth disease in North Cumbria, the experience of depression, and the work of Kurt Schwitters. John Darwell also holds a position as a lecturer at the University of Bolton and the Cumbria Institute of the Arts. See http://www.johndarwell.com&nbsp

Case study: John Darwell

Research in its various forms is inherent within all my projects now, but this has not always been the case. Undertaking a PhD strongly influenced my ideas about the nature of research and how as part of the creative process it is imperative to have an in-depth under - standing of the subjects that interest me. All my work prior to that point had been documentary in approach and had a very strong polemic. The projects were concerned with my personal take on social or political issues and, looking back, I see how this was a rather self-righteous attempt to set the world to rights, and I was becoming uneasy about it. Not only about my own work, but also about quite a lot of the work that I was seeing at the time, and I know exactly when that started. I had just come back from Chernobyl where I had been photographing within the exclusion zone. A no-entry area with a 30-kilometre radius that was evacuated after the nuclear meltdown at the Chernobyl Power Plant in 1986. The area contained one major city, Pripyat, and over 70 villages and scores of farms. The people living in these locations were given 24 hours to gather their possessions and were then moved to locations around the Ukraine, in most cases never to return. On my arrival back in the UK, the press had written about my having risked my life in such a dangerous place, which wasn't the case. I'd gone there, taken some photographs and then left again with everyone patting me on the back and saying I was a hero; but I was just a glorified tourist who chose to go there. The people affected by the disaster in Chernobyl had no choice but to live with the consequences every single day of their lives

The dark river: Agecroft - Salford

Edition of 150 black and white digital images by John Darwell of the River Irwell and surrounding areas between Agecroft and Salford, in the North of England. Volume five of five volume set exploring the River Irwell during the 1980s

The dark river: Kearsley power station

Edition of 150 black and white digital images by John Darwell of the River Irwell area around Kearsley power station, in the North of England. Volume three of five volume set exploring the River Irwell during the 1980s

Nightmares of reason

An image from John Darwell's 'A Black Dog Came Calling' series featured in this magazine as a standalone full page image

Unsettling the risk discourse: a dialogical narrative analysis of stories from CAMHS

The inadvertent harms stemming from risk management practices in mental health services have been widely highlighted, indicating that a change in approach to managing risk is required. However, suggested changes have tended to disregard the fact that risk is not merely a set of practices, but a discourse. This means that broader questions need to be posed to understand its power and influence; to see not simply what risk is, and how to tackle it, but what risk discourses do, and what they may be inhibiting. This study contributes to a body of literature that is concerned to locate discourses of risk within a wider cultural and political context. The stories of 6 people who have either lived or worked with a young person perceived to be ‘at risk’ of self-harm or suicide within Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) are analysed using the methods of dialogical narrative analysis. The analysis reveals the multiple discourses at play shaping and influencing how clinicians and families respond when situations are perceived to be risky. The risk discourse is seen to create contradictions that are incompatible with prioritising safety - serving the needs of organisations as opposed to service users or clinicians. The findings indicate that connection, dialogue, and the sharing of expertise, not the eradication of risk, can be important in supporting people to live through difficult and unsafe times. The study concludes that changes need to be considered at a relational level if spaces of resistance to the dominant risk discourse are to be found, and a reframing of expertise is explored as one such potential site. A counter discourse of relational interconnection is thereby offered as a way to foreground safe contexts and safe relationships, as opposed to ‘risk-free’ individuals

Brian, a retired shepherd, taking a break during the removal of the parlour floor from an infected farm building

An image from Darwell's series 'Dark days: foot and mouth disease in the Lake District and North Cumbria' was used as the opening image in this exhibition catalogue

The dark river: Kearsley - Clifton

Edition of 150 black and white digital images by John Darwell of the River Irwell and surrounding areas between Kearsley and Clifton, in the North of England. Volume two of five volume set exploring the River Irwell during the 1980s

Molecular species delimitation of a symbiotic fig-pollinating wasp species complex reveals extreme deviation from reciprocal partner specificity

Background: Symbiotic relationships have contributed to major evolutionary innovations, the maintenance of fundamental ecosystem functions, and the generation and maintenance of biodiversity. However, the exact nature of host/symbiont associations, which has important consequences for their dynamics, is often poorly known due to limited understanding of symbiont taxonomy and species diversity. Among classical symbioses, figs and their pollinating wasps constitute a highly diverse keystone resource in tropical forest and savannah environments. Historically, they were considered to exemplify extreme reciprocal partner specificity (one-to-one host-symbiont species relationships), but recent work has revealed several more complex cases. However, there is a striking lack of studies with the specific aims of assessing symbiont diversity and how this varies across the geographic range of the host. Results: Here, we use molecular methods to investigate cryptic diversity in the pollinating wasps of a widespread Australian fig species. Standard barcoding genes and methods were not conclusive, but incorporation of phylogenetic analyses and a recently developed nuclear barcoding gene (ITS2), gave strong support for five pollinator species. Each pollinator species was most common in a different geographic region, emphasising the importance of wide geographic sampling to uncover diversity, and the scope for divergence in coevolutionary trajectories across the host plant range. In addition, most regions had multiple coexisting pollinators, raising the question of how they coexist in apparently similar or identical resource niches. Conclusion: Our study offers a striking example of extreme deviation from reciprocal partner specificity over the full geographical range of a fig-wasp system. It also suggests that superficially identical species may be able to co-exist in a mutualistic setting albeit at different frequencies in relation to their fig host’s range. We show that comprehensive sampling and molecular taxonomic techniques may be required to uncover the true structure of cryptic biodiversity underpinning intimate ecological interactions