©Craig Easton, Book Cover for An Extremely Un-Get-atable Place, published by GOST

At a time when the current world environment brings up memories of Orwellian themes, photographer Craig Easton takes us back to the Hebrides Islands in his new book, An Extremely Un-get-atable Place, and to the isolated island of Jura where George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty- four in the late 1940’s while enduring a life-ending bout with tuberculosis. Easton’s images evoke the moody remoteness that gave Orwell inspiration. While revisiting the Orwell home of Barnhill, he also captures the inherent beauty of the untamed landscapes that surround the writer’s retreat as well as still-lifes of the quotidian objects that conjure up the daily household rituals of the late 1940’s including a charming ode to tea.

The ode to tea is also apparent in the stunning silver gelatin prints that were toned in tea. Easton captures the moody landscape of Jura with its windswept tree formations, red deer blurred in motion, and ragged coastlines (two in gatefolds) that in many ways mirror what must have been going through Orwell’s mind as he wrote his prescient tome. The dark solemnity of many of the images is embellished with brief extracts from diaries and letters that Orwell wrote to friends and publishers as well as images of actual manuscript pages from Nineteen Eighty- four.

According to Easton, “The work is about hope, about finding joy in the small things in life and believing in a better future in a world of political turmoil. In 2023 I was invited to stay at Barnhill – 8 miles from the nearest road and almost unchanged since the time Orwell lived there. The house was Orwell’s escape. His place of hope, a place of peace & calm where he could build a future.

Orwell was dying, but after the untimely death of his wife, Eileen, he was determined to cling on to life to maintain hope and belief in the future, if not for him then for their son and for humanity. He believed in a better future and counsels us against tyrants. He planted trees, grew vegetables, fished, kept chickens & had visitors galore. His diaries & letters are full of plans for the future.

In a similarly fractious time in world affairs, I too escaped. I was invited to stay at the house and there I made a series of landscape and still life images with my large format 10×8 field camera – the negatives then printed as hand-made silver gelatin prints and toned in strong tea in homage to Orwell’s famous obsession.”

An Extremely Un-get-atable Place is published by GOST Books, 2025 and available to purchase here – it is the first book of ‘An Island Trilogy’ – three monographs to be published over the next two years all made in the Scottish Islands.

©Craig Easton, Spread from An Extremely Un-Get-atable Place, published by GOST

©Craig Easton, Spread from An Extremely Un-Get-atable Place, published by GOST

©Craig Easton, Spread from An Extremely Un-Get-atable Place, published by GOST

©Craig Easton, Spread from An Extremely Un-Get-atable Place, published by GOST

©Craig Easton, Spread from An Extremely Un-Get-atable Place, published by GOST

Craig Easton is a multi-award-winning photographer and oral historian whose work is deeply rooted in research, community and collaborative practice. Known for his intimate portraits and expansive landscapes, his work regularly combines these elements with reportage approaches to storytelling, working collaboratively with others to incorporate words, pictures and audio in a research-based practice that weaves a narrative between contemporary experience and history.
Easton’s projects address the representation and misrepresentation of diverse communities and connect their experiences with wider issues around housing, unemployment, immigration and the historical legacy and social costs of industrial expansion and colonialism. The care and integrity with which he approaches his subjects is reflected in the intensity and warmth of the portraits he produces, and the authenticity of the dialogue created between his work and its audience.

To date he has published four monographs:
• An Extremely Un-get-atable Place: George Orwell on Jura
• Bank Top
• Thatcher’s Children
• Fisherwomen

Easton’s photographs are published and exhibited widely and held in private collections and museum archives worldwide. He has received global recognition for his work with multiple awards including:
• Photographer of the Year 2021 at the SONY World Photography Awards
• The Arnold Newman Prize for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture in the USA
• The Orwell Awards, a special prize for Thatcher’s Children in recognition of his long-term commitment to ‘Exposing Britain’s Social Evils’.
• In 2022, his achievements were recognized with the award of an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society.

Instagram: @mrcraigeaston

Instagram: @gost_books

©Craig Easton, from An Extremely Un-Get-atable Place, published by GOST

©Craig Easton, from An Extremely Un-Get-atable Place, published by GOST

©Craig Easton, from An Extremely Un-Get-atable Place, published by GOST

©Craig Easton, from An Extremely Un-Get-atable Place, published by GOST

©Craig Easton, from An Extremely Un-Get-atable Place, published by GOST

©Craig Easton, from An Extremely Un-Get-atable Place, published by GOST

©Craig Easton, from An Extremely Un-Get-atable Place, published by GOST

©Craig Easton, from An Extremely Un-Get-atable Place, published by GOST

©Craig Easton,The artist at work

©Craig Easton, The Darkroom