Foot and Mouth: The Aftermath (Hardcover)

Foot and Mouth: The Aftermath is a chilling look at the on-going devastation of last year’s countryside crisis. But don’t expect gruesome images of burning pyres – the eerie emptiness of cowsheds and fields in this photographic documentary are far more telling. The book costs £19.95 (£2 of which is donated to the ARC-Addington Fund, a charity to help the rural community).

A review by Mike Meredith of stress-counselling.co.uk

The United Kingdom foot-and-mouth-disease epidemic lasted only 9 months in 2001, but it has left a much longer shadow...
All the photographs in Foot and Mouth: The Aftermath are in black and white in order to convey something of the bleakness which Ian encountered in chronicling the aftermath situation remaining in 2002. As the author says: "There were just no animals" - no sheep peacefully grazing the fields, hills and moorlands, no cattle quietly lowing, no lambs or calves bellowing for their mothers.
"A number of farmers told me that when the slaughter of animals had been completed on their farms the birds went silent - I wanted to capture in image form that silence."
In an interview for Country Life On Line he said: "In Cumbria, I was told that during the autumn you could travel from Penrith to Carlisle and not see a single farm animal. It is that devastation that I wanted to show in the images in order to raise awareness of the plight of the rural community."

There is an initially surprising lack of animal pictures in the book. That is the whole point - empty cowsheds and fields, blank faces on people in the rural communities. This is what the aftermath of a devastating epidemic is about - loss of familiar views and familiar routines.
The book is a historical record that brings alive the impact of the great epidemics human as well as animal, that have occurred throughout history. It is a moving historical record and tribute to shocked rural communities - a glimpse of that bleak period before people are quite ready or able to rebuild their lives - the moment when they still bear the emotional, physical, economic and spiritual scars of recent trauma. The moment also, when they realize the full extent of their loss - their lives will never be quite the same again!