Landscape isn't my usual choice of photographic subject but this year I seem to have been photographing more out in the fields than anywhere else! I have tried to capture an impression of how I perceive the landscape whilst walking rather than presenting an idealised version of my surroundings - what I am looking for in my images is the communication of a sense of place.
No evidence of the sublime round here - this part of the world is not blessed with dramatic or wild scenery but displays instead a quiet and restrained beauty. Everywhere are the signs of man's hand on the landscape - pathways trodden through the fields; hedges, fences and gates; discarded bits of farming equipment; crops and livestock - a working countryside with traces of centuries of cultivation.
As I have already shown quite a few landscape photographs on this blog, the six selected below are the best of the rest.....
I really like all these. Perhaps it is something to do with being brought up in the country but although I have only been rarely to Oxfordshire, I felt that there was something very familiar about these pictures.
ReplyDeleteIf you are not aware of his work you might like to look at the Richard Billingham's landscape work. I came across it at the "Seduced by Art " exhibition at the National.http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/seduced-by-art-photography-past-and-present
Hi Edith. Glad you like these - I'm never really sure how I feel about my landscape work, especially the images taken where I live. The landscape is so familiar to me that it's difficult to see it with fresh eyes (especially at this time of year!)
ReplyDeleteI have seen Richard Billingham's book of landscape photographs but would like to see them in the flesh, so to speak. I haven't been to the Seduced by Art exhibition yet, but plan to do so next month - looking forward to it.
So glad to see these. And read your comment on the sense of place. It is what is so often missing from the sort of landscape photography in which the effort to impress becomes wearing. In the Seduced by Art show (in total not a satisfying show) I found four colour contact prints by Jem Southam, each a woodland interior, almost casually framed, without rhetoric and and worth all the noise of the competitive stuff (the Consumer Sublime?) I had seen earlier that day in the National Theatre.
ReplyDeletePerhaps accustomed eyes are as good as fresh, better sometimes: see work of James Ravilious.
Peter Luck (not anon but blogger doesn't accept my URL)
Thanks for your comments Peter and I'm pleased you like the work. I agree with you about the rhetoric - it gets wearing after a while. I'm familiar with Jem Southam's work so am looking forward to seeing his photographs in the Seduced by Art exhibition. Also love the work of James Ravilious - you have reminded me what a wonderful photographer he is. I will go and search out some of his work again!
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