Elegant Decay

Every now and then I submit images for editorials to magazines. There are tonnes of magazines that accept submissions, generally you have to pick some sort of theme and send them 6-20 images which they will layout together in a story format. Recently I got together with Matt Peacock from Boss Model Management and Kate Simpson (Stylist) from The Hut Group and headed up to Barmour Castle in the North East of England.

Barmoor Castle is a 19th-century country house built on an ancient site in Northumberland, the building is quite delapidated now but in it’s time it had a Hollywood connection – Katharine Hepburn and her co-star Spencer Tracy once opted for a 5,209-mile trip to the quiet and idyllic grounds of Barmoor Castle in Northumberland for their secret love-nest.

News of the Tinseltown twosome’s romance was an open secret among Hollywood’s elite from 1942 until Tracy’s death in 1967.

The castle isn’t quite up to hosting Hollywood’s biggest and brightest anymore but we used it’s unique character and petina to be the backdrop for our editorial – the theme of our story was of an aristocrat who still walked the halls of a mansion that had long since broken down but he refused to leave the ‘sinking ship’.

Matt was instrumental in the concept for the shoot and came up with the story and liaised with the castle’s owner to get permission to access the building and he did his usual stellar job of modelling in the project.

The editorial was published in Ellements magazine in the end as you will see from the tearsheet with the ‘Elegant Decay’ tile.