Photos: Lottie Davies’ “Quinn” is a photographic meditation on loss

• Since 2014, British photographer, artist, and writer, Lottie Davies has worked extensively on the series Quinn - an intricately researched and documented large-scale multimedia project that extends far beyond the gallery walls. Quinn recounts the eponymous fictional story of a young man, William Henry Quinn, who, in post-Second World War Britain, walks from the south-west of England to the far north of Scotland, in what becomes an epic and symbolic journey. It is a meditation on grief, loss, loneliness, the human search for meaning, and the possibility of redemption through time and landscape, pertinent across the ages.

1 / 8

Untitled from the series "Quinn." Quinn recounts the eponymous fictional story of a young man, William Henry Quinn, who, in post-Second World War Britain, walks from the south-west of England to the far north of Scotland, in what becomes an epic and symbolic journey.(Courtesy Lottie Davies)

UPDATED ON FEB 19, 2021 02:40 PM IST

2 / 8

Untitled from the series "Quinn." While fictional, Davies has created Quinn in response to the real experiences of young men and women post-trauma, both in the early twentieth century and now.(Courtesy Lottie Davies)

UPDATED ON FEB 19, 2021 02:40 PM IST

3 / 8

Although Davies initiated work on Quinn in 2014, clear comparisons to the Covid-19 pandemic can be seen in Quinn’s own mourning for his previous life, demonstrating one more way in which Davies’ series transcends time and place.(Courtesy Lottie Davies)

UPDATED ON FEB 19, 2021 02:40 PM IST

4 / 8

Untitled from the series "Quinn." While viewing the monograph, the reader metaphorically and sensorially walks alongside Quinn, and if they choose, can listen to an online recording of Samuel J Weir narrating the diary while turning the pages.(Courtesy Lottie Davies)

UPDATED ON FEB 19, 2021 02:40 PM IST

5 / 8

Untitled from the series "Quinn." As Quinn travels on his odyssey it is revealed to be both a physical and metaphorical journey mediated by the British landscape, a geography that is both changed and unchanged since the 1940s.(Courtesy Lottie Davies)

UPDATED ON FEB 19, 2021 02:40 PM IST

6 / 8

Untitled from the series "Quinn." The ancient byways along which Quinn has travelled remain as they were then, and yet with the immutability of change and the unremitting nature of time passing, lives and memories change and fade.(Courtesy Lottie Davies)

UPDATED ON FEB 19, 2021 02:40 PM IST

7 / 8

Untitled from the series "Quinn." The project comprises large-format photographs, moving image pieces, ephemera and text vignettes, taking the viewer through a multi-dimensional experience.(Courtesy Lottie Davies)

UPDATED ON FEB 19, 2021 02:40 PM IST

8 / 8

Untitled from the series "Quinn." The carefully conceived production of Quinn’s diary, printed on opaque fine paper, is directly inspired by the small annotated diary Davies’ grandfather wrote while deployed in Normandy during WWII.(Courtesy Lottie Davies)

UPDATED ON FEB 19, 2021 02:40 PM IST