Richard Ansett — Documentation

Polaroid 669, St Ostyth Village © Richard Ansett 2012

On Sunday 26th August, 2012, a couple’s reported sighting of a large cat like creature in the fields surrounding St Ostyth near Clacton-on-Sea, Essex provoked a massive police response and world media attention. Search teams including two helicopters with thermal imaging equipment scoured the countryside. A spokesperson stressed, the incident was not being treated as a hoax. Mr and Mrs Atkin who spotted the creature said “Whatever it was, it’s definitely still out there.”

Carl Jung used our fears of animals to indicate a detachment from our primitive instincts in our contemporary selves. Here, the ‘creature’ is equally present and absent. This project both uses this absence to indicate the gulf from our pre-modern selves but primarily the resulting images from visiting the area during the alert are a reflection of fears sub-consciously present and projected onto an otherwise banal and ultimately unchanged landscape.