In 2015, Kieran Dodds was visiting Fair Isle, the small island between Shetland and Orkney, for a work assignment. The photographer, who has a background in zoology, was there to document the relationship between nature and human industry. The island is a mecca for birdwatchers.
“I had wanted to go since I was a kid. You get a lot of migrant birds from across the world, rare and unusual ones, and in summer you get seabird cities: mass gatherings on the cliffs.”
Dodds was on his way from the island’s bird observatory to see the puffins when he noticed the Twister board and spinner on a peninsula between two beaches. He used his iPhone 6 to snatch a quick shot of the scene, which was ruined when a mother sheep appeared and the lambs scampered away.
The observatory and the Twister board are no longer in situ; the former was destroyed in a fire, while the latter, which was made in 2011 for the Tall Ships race, has gone, too. “It seems to have disintegrated with the pitter-patter of lambs’ feet,” Dodds says. “Maybe archaeologists will find it in hundreds of years and wonder what this strange ritual was.”
