Sam Lyne is currently studying BA Photography at Plymouth College of Art. Born and bred within the ancient Celtic homeland of Cornwall, his works finds inspiration in myth, legend and historical stories pertaining to the local area.
Touched by experiences of loss and bereavement, he seeks to utilise his emerging practice as acts of preservation and intimate sentiment. Two of his projects to date are disseminated as book works, hand bound in form, archival in tone.
'My Dearest Beatrice':
Bletchley Park remains a building of immense historical note. Housing the secretive machinery deployed in the infamous code-breaking technique of the Second World War, it has long held fascination for historians and artists alike. Secrecy demanded the destruction of almost all of their records at the end of the war and the site is now a museum that relies on voluntarily gathered information on the individuals who worked inside these enigmatic walls.
A house clearing took place in 2015 unearthing of thousands of photographic slides. These slides documented trips taken around Europe between the 1950s and the 1980s by two individuals. As well as this discovery were a host of artefacts, including letters written during the 1940s and 1950s that unlocked an intimate photographic narrative.
My Dearest Beatrice examines a tale of deep love and devotion of two people who met at the height of the war. The process unearthed over 300 of the 4,000 enigmatic slides documenting the artist’s Great Aunt and wife of the original photographer gazing into distant landscapes. Alongside intimate letters detailing the couple’s time at Bletchley Park, the work seeks both to reveal and maintain confidences, honouring and preserving a delicate love story. They had secrets to keep for years; those secrets remain.
After falling in love at Bletchley Park—home base for code breakers during World War II—in the 1940s, a couple exchanges letters and pictures over the course of four decades. A story of love and devotion reconstructed through found objects.
