Cryptopolis: An Uncertain History of Ghosts
Gerard Gibson

In Capital, Carl Marx notes the proliferation of mills in the island of Ireland, and comments specifically on the difficult and dangerous working conditions documented there. These mills are now long gone, either redeveloped or simply erased from the landscape, along with the memories and legacy of those who worked within them, eroding our social and industrial inheritance.

Cryptopolis: An Uncertain History of Ghosts explores themes of dereliction, the temporality of human labour and the spectral scars of industrial and social change in the environment. It examines three of these ghostly mills which are disused and abandoned but still standing. In documenting and investigating these sites, it considers locations where the theories of Marx, Derrida and Barthes overlap, hopefully revealing something of the occluded forces which haunt our landscape, our culture and our politics. These buildings are idle but uneasy; structures destabilised with the challenges of the past as much as the decay of the present. Approaching each site as a material archive, the images in this book are as much about what is missing, as what is captured by the lens.

To evoke the stochastic experience of entering and exploring these forgotten, hidden, or forbidden places this book comes in a sealed, limited edition of one hundred. Each copy of this strictly limited run comes signed and numbered, and randomly carries one of five original, hand tipped-in photographs, meaning that there are only twenty such particular versions of the book.¹

Gerard Gibson is from Belfast, and lectures at a local college. He has a professional background in the Arts and practice-based research. Currently, he is a Masters student at Queen’s University, Belfast, studying Film. He has an interest in gaining a more holistic understanding of the complex processes which drive us to tell stories, the forces which shape storytelling and its forms in our culture, and the roles we undertake when we participate in such narratives.

LensFlare Press is located in Co. Down, Ireland.