Artist Statement
The two selections of six photographs have been selected from two separate series from a six-year PhD research project, which investigated photographic perspectives of landscape.
Since the 18th century images of landscape through paint and later through photography have often conformed to notions of the ‘prospect’ or the ‘picturesque’. In photographic practice there have been certain traditions in both the aesthetics of the image and in the methodology of its creation. A large format camera was invariably used to relay the maximum detail of the surveyor, necessitating patience, discipline and strong shoulder muscles. The legend of the landscape photographer striding out into the hills to contemplate the emptiness of wilderness is still an ingrained part of our collective belief. The view from the hill, frequently adopted, however reduces the environment to form and pattern, and often misses the essential detail, the disappearance of our hedgerow wildlife for example and even the hedgerows themselves. The fixed scopic regime of the surveyor places landscape in the position of other, at a distance, and creates a set of value systems based entirely upon a scene’s picturable qualities, the worthiness of the view. This may account for the fact that most of our National Parks were regions labeled picturesque or sublime in the eighteenth century.
These landscape photographs do not seek the purity of the wilderness or the authority of the view, but concentrate on the familiar, the home ground and the private; intimate personal landscapes, places to look out from and not at. The places of the imagery are unfixed, mutable, sites that remain unable to be catagorised. The use of lightweight cameras with plastic lenses and mobile phone cameras with very low resolution strips away the formality of the image, and defies the production of maximum detail. Instead of the structure of the picturesque, promoted in the eighteenth century by the Reverend William Gilpin as the ideal, the madness of the baroque aesthetic is the quest, with its explosive energy and disrupted composition. This form of photographing the land will perhaps lead to a more democratic representation, giving the peat bog and the hedgerow the same status as the majestic view from the summit of Snowdon.
Resume
Born Plymouth, UK, 1953
Dean of the Faculty of Art and Design, Swansea Institute, University of Wales.
PhD 2004 University of Wales
Towards an understanding of the role of photography in the preservation and destruction of the rural environment.
MA with Distinction 1988
ABIPP
A selection of exhibitions, papers and publications
Tempered Ground, Exhibition of the work of 23 artists at the National Museum of Garden history London, linked with Tate Britain and the NMPFT. A ‘live’ show over a period of 2 months of mobile phone camera photography that interrogated notions of the Baroque, the decisive moment and performativity.
Conversations with the Landscape. Museum of Swansea. Mobile camera photographs.A remote live show of images on a plasma screen. Sponsored by Sony UK Ltd.A live show of one weeks duration of mobile phone photography concerned with the re-evaluation of 18th century tour of Wales and the picturesque, re-siting the viewer from a position of spectator to within the enclave.
Work selected for WEST Welsh photographic show plus publication. Touring galleries in Wales inc. Ffoto Gallery, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery and Mostyn Gallery.
From Without – London Photographic Awards. Publication and exhibition at the following venues – London, Amsterdam, New York,Glasgow and Frankfurt. Photographic works that explored outside of the frame in time and space, interrogating the decisive moment.
Article and images in Source, Summer Edition, 2003. Alternative landscapes – a Baroque approach.
Still visions- Changing Lives, Tourism and Photography. International Conference at Sheffield Hallam University, Paper.
