A few feet away

Last week, browsing in one of my favourite London bookshops - Koenig Books on Charing X Road - I came across a rather beautiful volume of photographs by Paul Strand, the renowned photographer whose work I'm ashamed to say I'm not very familiar with. The book is called The Garden at Orgeval and consists of black and white images of his garden in France, taken in the last years of his life - nothing spectacular at first glance, but beautifully composed quiet studies of plant forms and shapes.

From The Garden at Orgeval by Paul Strand

What led me to examine the book more closely was Strand's quotation on the opening page:

"The artist's world is limitless.
It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away.
It is always on his doorstep."

It is something which immediately struck home - how we are often blind to what exists under our noses, preferring the exotic, unusual or unfamiliar. It's certainly easier to make interesting work far from home - just being in a new or unknown location sharpens the photographer's eye. But surely it can be just as rewarding to observe and document our immediate surroundings, the stuff of everyday life in all its familiarity.

In The Gravity of Time, the introductory essay to the book, photographer Joel Meyerowitz explains how when he first came across this book as a young man, he thought the photographs were a bit dull and simple compared to Strand's iconic earlier work, and that Strand had 'probably lost his nerve and succumbed to some sort of visual ennui'. Only when he was approaching the same age as Strand was then, did Meyerowitz 'get it', understanding that a deep visual communion with the natural world was probably something you only appreciate with age. Artists throughout the centuries have tended to pare down their work in their later years and Meyerowitz proposes that perhaps it is a 'winding down of ambition and the measuring of the time that is left that draws them to this simplicity, within which lie the subtle complexities of nature often hidden from the eyes of the young.' You can listen to him reading the essay here

This is a tendency I've noticed in my own practice though I don't claim to have any deep communion with nature. As I get older my priorities seem to be changing. Instead of heading out to the street with my camera, I find my attention turned towards making still life photographs at home, using the objects I find to hand to create compositions which resonate with a personal meaning. However, I do wonder whether the reason for this is sheer laziness rather than any deepening of insight - it takes effort to go out and photograph in the city! I also struggle a bit with the kind of work featured in this book.  Close-up studies of nature - the kind of thing beloved by macro enthusiasts - don't particularly inspire me.

So this morning, I thought I would go out into the garden and see if anything caught my eye on my own doorstep. At this time of year, there is not much to see - a lot of brown branches and bare earth, the tangled remains of last year's growth. Yet there are still a few little traces of colour and some welcome signs of spring's imminent arrival. This is an exercise I have tried in the past - trying to draw inspiration from unpromising material - and is probably something I should do more often. Looking closely brings its own rewards.

There and back II

Another day, another walk. This time across fields and taking in three ponds and some derelict farm buildings for added interest. The fields are heavy with mud which sticks to my boots, the wind is bitingly cold and my hands freeze but it feels good to be outside as my lungs fill with the fresh air, blowing away my mental cobwebs.

The ponds are a feature of the landscape round here - I know of at least half a dozen. They are fed by springs which trickle down from the Edge Hill escarpment, the same escarpment where the Royalists camped out and surveyed the battlefield in the Civil War. I have done this walk at different times of the year, but it is in the winter months that their stark and mysterious beauty is most appealing....

There and back

Walking and thinking at the same time are ideally suited. In fact, I just thought of doing this occasional series of walking related posts whilst out on a walk this morning!  Going for a walk gives you time out from daily concerns and frees the mind to wander, just as your feet wander down the road. It's also good for you!

One of the things I find most frustrating about living in the middle of the countryside is the boredom that sets in, walking the same road and paths day after day, month after month, year after year - so much so, that I've virtually stopped going for walks round here. My eyes have become lazy and immune to the subtle changes around me. This morning, though, I thought I would try and turn that feeling of boredom into an advantage and make an effort to observe my surroundings more closely, to see if I could find things I hadn't noticed in the past, or to picture them in a different light. 

No two days are the same, depending on the hour, the weather, the season. At the beginning of my short walk this morning the sky was a cloudless blue but on my return, the clouds were rolling in from the west, casting dramatic shadows over the landscape. Things also take on a different appearance on the route back compared to the route out. In theory this should mean there will be something new to photograph all the time. I'm seeing this as a sort of challenge - to try and make an interesting photograph out of the banal and everyday. We shall see! 

Spring is cancelled this year II

Here is a different take on the same subject matter as my last post.  Instead of using my digital SLR, I shot these using black and white film on the Hasselblad.  The square format gives a different, perhaps more formal feel, and the black and white lends a more sombre and melancholy note.

The snow has all but disappeared now, and much as I enjoy using the snow as a backdrop to my photographs, I sincerely hope we have seen the last of it for this year!

Spring is cancelled this year

In January I posted some similar images on this blog and my Hymn to the Hipstamatic blog. Who would have thought that two months later we would still be in the same situation? The snow continues to fall even as I write. Roll on summer.....

Snowbound

I always say I love the snow yet when it comes, I'm reluctant to venture outside.  Looking out the window, I see a sky heavy and featureless as the snow falls in fine flakes.  It's not tempting me to step out! Inside it's warm and snug - the perfect excuse to settle down and watch the world transform itself through the window. It's not long before the garden attracts a variety of wildlife visitors in search of food.....just a shame that my zoom lens is in London!

Ice-land

Complete white-out today so I'm not venturing out.  Here are some images from a couple of days ago instead....

A hoar frost covers all the trees and bushes and fog blankets the landscape.  No wind stirs the branches and no birdsong is to be heard - the countryside is still and silent under its shroud.  I make a quick foray outside to record this strange land and return with feet and hands frozen like blocks of ice! However, I'm not complaining - it makes a welcome change from the weeks of rain and sodden, muddy fields.