Abstract:
The Morse TV series has, perhaps unwittingly, created a fictional parallel world in and around Oxford where crime, truth and true crime cross over one another.
It has been suggested that around 30000 visitors are drawn to the city for Morse alone. Many come from China and SE Asia where the series has become a cult phenomenon. In Oxford, an industry has grown to support them (guided tours, memorabilia, websites, maps and guidebooks, guest lectures, and so on). Many of the tour companies have tapped into a perception among the tourists that Morse’s Oxford is what Britain is like today. For the last four or five years, this has even led to coachloads visiting the domestic idyll of a small (relatively affluent) housing estate in Kidlington to photograph themselves against the backdrop of suburban gardens and 1960s bungalows. At least one estate agent has reported difficulty selling property on one small road where Morse investigated both a murder and a suicide!
This project involves four local novice photographers, supported by a retired Detective Superintendent, researching, visiting, interpreting, and photographing a selection of the original ‘scenes of crime’ from the series. The learning from working with this team will inform my own practice and major research project.
Bionote:
Graham Wilson has a PhD from the University of Bristol in Behavioural Science and is a part-time Tutor in Psychology and Counselling at the University of Oxford. He is studying part-time for an MA by Research in Photography at the University of Gloucestershire. His research is exploring the ability of imagery to affect the behaviour of communities.