Jon Tonks

With the prospect of the Empire project becoming a book later this year, six years after the project started, I had been looking at layouts and selecting the images I wanted to fill each chapter. It became abundantly obvious by method of piles of 7×5 photographs sat in piles of ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘maybe’ that narrowing down to around 20 images per island was becoming difficult, all apart from the edit for St. Helena. In fact I was at only 16, including a few ‘maybes’. Not a massive issue, so I thought, as it would be easy enough to hold the edit up with images from the other three islands, but the more I thought about it the more frustrated I became.

Around January this year, off the back of this discovery, someone planted a seed in my brain by flippantly suggesting that I just need to go back and shoot some more. When I left the island in 2010 I had not anticipated returning, well not at least before the book was done, so trying to justify another trip wasn’t easy. Firstly there is the expense, and secondly there is the time that it takes to reach the island. Logistics of popping back to St. Helena aren’t particularly straight forward, so it whether I could return was a tough call. Before I knew it, however, I was back in Cape Town waiting to board another ship.

Getting back on the RMS St. Helena feels a little bit like going back to your old school – everywhere is familiar, the old faces still there, the smell is the same and they ring a bell at lunchtime.

The three weeks that I had on the island have turned out to be very important for the edit. My first trip was only eight days, and by comparison to the month I had spent on each of the other places, it was obvious why the edit needed more time. I managed to re-visit a number of people and locations that I wished for more time with previously, and I got to view the island at a slower pace and get to know people far better. Being able to socialise opens up so many doors to things you might not expect, and I realised how so many of the best moments are impossible to plan.

By chance I was on the island during their main annual celebration of St Helena Day. Children and adults dress up in costumes, floats pass through the main street with music blaring, and the entire island shuts down for an evening of drinking. This whole day gave me the chance to come across a lot of people at random (see Napoleon below), and it provided a couple of portraits that I feel have worked well, but I could have never predicted.

Other highlights of the trip were spending time with the St Helena Met Office, where they release a weather balloon into the atmosphere to collect meteorological information to feed back to the UK (see video link). I also spent time photographing the airport construction site, and following an invite to dinner with the Chief of Police I got to go to Prison.

One thing that really struck me on the island is that when you are sent to prison everyone knows you are there, and everyone in the jail knows you too. The prison happened to be full when I went in – 12 inmates, most were out with the wardens farming, but the rest were wandering round like in a school common room. The most interesting person I came across was Linda, the Senior Prison Officer. Linda’s parents took over the role of cooking for inmates during the 1960’s, so she grew up in the upstairs part of the prison, and then took on the officer role in ’93. For a time they also ran a video store too, so if you wanted to rent a movie you had to go to jail.

One of my re-visits was to go and see a gentleman called Steve Biggs, I met him in 2010 and hugely enjoyed his eccentricity. The best part of going back was discussing his life story after the pictures were taken – I learnt information that was valuable to the captioning of a handful of other pictures in the book, such as why Tristanians put an ‘h’ in front of all their vowels. Of course all of this was discussed sat on his veranda watching him smoke cigarettes and drink gin, in an immaculate white shirt and cravat.

Steve (see pictured below) was originally from Torquay. He first came to St. Helena in 1979 when taking up the role of ‘Purser of Customer Care’ on the RMS St. Helena. He later bought an old farm house on the island in 1995, and spent the next few years turning it into a guesthouse. He also acquired a vintage Rolls Royce that cost him £3,000. The idea was to have a courtesy car to collect guests from the harbour when they arrive on the ship. Steve didn’t anticipate that having the brakes fixed would cost him a further £3k but it certainly adds to the charm of the experience.

After leaving St. Helena for the second time people asked whether I would go back. I wasn’t really sure the first time, but now I have been twice it would be odd if I never saw the island again, so I am sure it will happen. Perhaps not before the book is published this time. I also managed to get to Ascension Island for a few days before a gloriously turbulent flight home. I finally witnessed and photographed a giant turtle nesting, and I caught up with some more old faces as this was now my third time on the island.

Since getting back to the UK I have been deciding how the new edit blends with the old St Helena edit – what should stay and what should go, and from what I can see there will be quite a few changes. For now I will put up just a few images from the trip, the rest will be revealed in due course.