Echoes: Stone Circles, Community and Heritage, Stonehenge Visitor Centre review - young photographers explore ancient resonances

Stonehenge is about 5,000 years old; three photographic artists currently exhibiting in the visitor centre are all under the age of 25. The juxtaposition of 21st century and the ancient world has been facilitated by Shout Out Loud, a youth engagement programme from English Heritage, custodians of this historic monument. In collaboration with Photoworks, this gives rise to the first ever exhibition of new photography at the site.

So much yet so little is known about stone circles one might wonder what three emerging artists might add to the sum of our understanding around prehistory. Indeed, Yuxi Hou, Sally Barton and Serena Burgis have all stepped in where experts sometimes fear to tread. Their group show, with the title Echoes: Stone Circles, Community and Heritage, looks and listens with a creative mind.

The diversity of their responses serves to preserve a sense of mystery which duly echoes down through millennia: Hou has found a gathering of performative individuals; Burgis tunes into an atavistic form of consciousness; Barton plays with experimental forays into folk memory and children’s games. What they share is an interest in community: this was the theme and prompt with which English Heritage invited young people to explore any of its 250 free-to-enter UK sites.

The result was a meaningful coincidence: all three photographers responded with projects that took inspiration from stone circles. It is a paradox that such early traces of humanity on these shores are so much part of the zeitgeist in 2025. But for those of us who have picked up a field guide or accessed a podcast about neolithic sites, it is no surprise to find they energise visitors and artists alike.

Some might call them eccentrics, but Yuxi Hou’s portraits of the people who gather at Arbor Low in Derbyshire is much more respectful than that (main picture: Meditation at the Stones, 2025). Whether meditating in a circle, or captured in a moment of reverie, the artist has discovered that, for a surprisingly large and organised group of stone lovers, the bronze age location still holds meaning, and solace, and spiritual connection to the land. Hou sensitively paints her images with the same light and shade which, at solstice, will animate this “Stonehenge of the North”.

Also in Derbyshire, Sally Barton offers a robust response to the so-called Nine Ladies Stone Circle in the Peak District. Barton visited two local primary schools, conveyed a group of students to Stanton Moor, and invited them to dress in flowing costumes suitable for dancing around the stones. Her shots appear lively, but plenty of thought has gone into a number of offbeat details: a set of goal posts festooned with ribbon, a photo mounted on a giant trade union pennant, and a badge made with the image of the artist’s grandparents. Barton celebrates her set of stones with a strong sense of people and place (pictured above right: Sally Barton, Lydgate Folk, 2025).

Serena Burgis provides the most soulful, personal response (pictured below: Face to Face, 2025). Her mixed media presentation takes inspiration from the Kingston Russell stone circle in Dorset. Next to her ageless black-and-white photography, she has included poetry, semi-abstract images and veils printed with textured stone pattern. Her portrait of Dorset’s largest stone circle emerges as a self-portrait and a meditation on her family and Thai roots. Both poem and veil reach back through time and anchor the portraits of the artist’s mother in the English countryside.The cumulative effect of these three presentations tells you something we already knew. Stone circles are not just for Anglo-Saxons from the ancient world. These three talented photographic artists, whose roots are both local and global, have enjoyed the same rights of access as senior druids of yore. We may never know the original function of these places but the sense of Generation Z, as evinced here, is that community and stone circles are a perfect match.

One of the most striking images in the show is that of a visitor to Arbor Low, wrapped up warmly in hat and coat, perhaps apprehending the dawn in this special place. He holds before his face a sinuous golden form, the ornamental model of a snake, which I was to learn that this anonymous sun worshipper, brought as souvenir in Egypt and kept in his home for occasions like these. It is a fine composition and the S-shaped shadow falls, evocatively, across his face. This may be a ritual of his own making but it is no less solemn for that. Perhaps when it comes to standing stones we are all making it up as we go along. But these three artists show the productivity in that.

• Echoes: Stone Circles, Community and Heritage is at Stonehenge visitor centre in collaboration with Photoworks and Shout Out Loud until Sunday 7 September 2025
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