This Field Note documents an editorial assignment for The Times, photographing an event at the British Museum ahead of the arrival of the Bayeux Tapestry.
The tapestry itself wasn’t there yet. It was still on its way to London, but the stories within it were already being revisited, particularly those of the women whose presence has historically received less attention.
With the central object of the story still absent, the photographs instead focused on the people gathered around The Bayeux Tapestry: those discussing the tapestry, those listening, and the anticipation surrounding its arrival. The event became a way of photographing a story before its principal subject had even entered the room.
There was something interesting about photographing people looking at a story they had not yet been able to see for themselves. A thousand-year-old object, not yet in the room, but already occupying everyone’s attention.
Rather than attempting to recreate the tapestry through secondary imagery, the photographs locate the story in the present. In the people questioning, discussing and re-examining an object that has been telling its version of history for almost a thousand years.
The resulting images support the accompanying feature by providing a contemporary human context for the tapestry and the questions being asked of it.
Read the full story in The Times.
