Rockfalls, Rivermouths & Ponds

‘Rockfalls, Rivermouths & Ponds’ is like the title suggests, get into the three sections. 

'Rockfalls' is set on the beach at Whale Chine on the Isle of White, where he was originally drawn by the roaring waves but then he was pulled to the trickle sounds from the cliff face behind him. He began to discover the tiny rivulets of particles that occasionally detach themselves from the cliff face and bounce onto the beach below. The more he stood there, the more he began to notice this becoming a frequent thing.

            ‘Rivermouths’ began from a desire to imagine the Earth engulfed by water. The Earth is erased from these photographs, drowned, as two bodies of water become combined, as the stream becomes released and flows into the sea, mirroring a psychological movement when we ourselves become exhausted and give ourselves up to death or something greater than ourselves.

            ‘Ponds’ is a project based upon a small pond which is between two fields and the moor at Woon Gumps in the far west of Cornwall. The shallow saucer was dug out of the ground a few hundred years ago and has continually used by cattle, which with their heavy presence have maintained paths through the gorse and brambles. When they are full, they are like a ‘mirrored disk or an eye reflecting the heavens’ when empty, they are described as ‘craters made by celestial objects crashing into the ground.’ 

The Red River

The Red River grew slowly but is a descriptive journey of a broken and damaged landscape, where those who lived in the farms and cottages along this polluted stream to survive their own world by their gardens and smallholdings.

 As Southam continued making these images, he also found that they took him on a metaphorical journey, where stories, myths and visions that were buried in his imagination found life in the landscape.

            The river itself is no longer than 6-7 miles and no wider than a few feet, but for hundreds of years the water has been diverted and used to aid the extraction of tine and copper ore from the mines in the valley. 

It rises on the granite spine of Cornwall at Black Rock and flows north and then west to reach the Godrevy Sea. It’s not hidden but is not much seen or appreciated by those visiting Cornwall. 

Upton Pyne

The Pond at Upton Pyne interested Southam as he because fascinated by what he called, an eyesore, which was in the middle of an agricultural and dormitory village. It was formed at the sight of an eighteenth-century manganese mine and now, the land is owned by a local aristocratic family that was involved in the mining venture. In the early nineteenth-century it was abandoned because no-one knew what to do with the mine after workings there were abandoned.

            It challenged the notions of what a village pond should really look like and this is what got Southam first interested, returning there one afternoon making the first photograph, he met a man who lived next door and with an agreement off the landowners, he has started to transform the area, and he spoke about creating an Arcadian realm around the pond. And was fine with the idea of Southam coming by every so often to photograph the process and progress.

            The more he photographed, the more it became an allegorical tale about one man’s attempt to make the world a better place. With all the work done himself, and villagers becoming sceptical about it and complaining about the mess around the pond, he kept at it.

            Southam drove past it one day and saw that a different hand had taken up the challenge. For the next three years, he followed the work of two others of the village who continued to transform this small bit of land.

            The story then became a three chapter tale. The first two are about the three year cycles of each attempt to improve the pond and the third is a short epilogue that places the site in a wider geographical perspective, with the images representing a collection of histories.

-Jem Southam. 

Jem Southam - 'Landscape Stories'

Jem Southam begins his photographical day in the early morning, before breakfast; take to the countryside of Bristol, Cornwall, Dorset, Devon and Somerset with the camera in his hand. His images seem lyrical, of the hills and the valleys, farms and farmland, coasts and cliffs, streams and ponds, all showing the subtle evolution of that location, transformed by the natural geological process and also human intervention over centuries.

               They all become almost three-dimensional images which show the natural layers of the British countryside/costal countryside and we develop, as a viewer, an understanding of the nature and how it works in these various locations. Created over a long period of time, this series of descriptive photographs show great power from an underlying allegorical language which engages and deepens out creative imagination.

                This book, Landscape Stories, is Southam’s first comprehensive collection of his work, which shows three completed pieces of work; The Pond at Upton Pyne, The Red River and Rockfalls, Rivermouths and Ponds. It also shows smaller pieces of work from series which were still in the making during the publication of this book. Southam’s brief narratives about the places where he has captured, pieced with essays from photo historians, Gerry Badger and Andy Grundberg, create an in depth context for thinking more about these fascinating landscape stories. 

Southam, J (2005). Landscape Stories. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Front fold.

Brandt - 'Literary Britain'

Brant is most famous for his distorted nudes and his landscapes, often combining body parts which resemble the landscape around them. In this book ‘Literary Britain’ Brandt picks up on many landscapes which appeared in book form. In the introduction, John Hayward, he says that no matter what kind of collection of images we look at, there are two faculties that come into play. The first is recognition and the second is association.

Our immediate reaction, when looking at a photograph, is to discover what the photograph represents, with our brain telling us exactly what we see, we recognise parts to the image. We may not be inclined to look further into it so when we then move on or turn the page. But when we are interested and curious, association kicks in and we begin to see what the photographer saw when making the image, we use association, memory, and relate the present with the past.

With this book and with these images with text, Brandt wanted to illustrate a particular theme through his images as suggested in the vague title, but the work required some explanation, and aid if you will of their identification, and this is supplied from the letterpress facing each plate.

“These descriptive texts, whether in the form of allusive quotations in verse or prose, or of biblical memoranda, should, I suggest, be used simply as helpful clues to the fullest possible understanding of the pictures. They will be more or less useful according to the individual reader’s knowledge of the facts or allusions they contain about books and authors; and to his capacity for responding, through the association of this personal experience of life and literature with the scenes recorded here, to the evocative element in each picture.”

Hayward, J. (1984). An Introduction By John Hayward (1951). In: Literary Britain. London: Victoria and Albert Museum .

Forest Of Dean - images

Before I describe some of the images in 'The Secret Forest of Dean' all of the images in this book have a square framing, and a more rectangular framing and this shows it was originally a medium format negative, and as we know you can enlarge to a bigger scale and show so much more detail in medium format, rather than 35mm so she wanted to show the textures and details in all of her images. 

Fence, Russell's Enclosure P.13

This is the first image of the series in the book and as you can see it is a beautifully thought out image. The strong light trail makes it feel almost heaven like and with the sun beaming down on the fence, we want to go through it and explore this ideal location. It really does draw the viewer in. In her notes, she tells us this area is being allowed to regenerate and the sheep aren't allowed here but deer are and this makes the landscape, to me, seem more beautiful and picturesque because of the beauty of deer’s compared to sheep.  

Near Blackpool Bridge P.31

Jim Hoare, Sheep Badger P.35

Coalway Annual sheep Market P.37

Spruce, Mallards Pike P.25

A lot of her images show overgrown, wild areas of woodland with beautiful sunshine rays creating so much contrast and texture, focusing on the importance of wildlife and the forest itself. She also captures wildlife roaming free, and also sheep and their farmers and farm land that surround the forest, she captures the farmers and characters which help the traditional British landscape thriving, old buildings and bridges that are overgrown and unused but add curiosity to the location. She has really mingled well with the farmers and workers of the area, asked about what they do when they aren’t working and interested in why families with caravans camp here. When it was busy with tourists she took advantage and photographed them, when it was more quiet in the winter she photographed the landscape more and shows up the change in seasons.  

Fay Godwin - 'The Secret Forest of Dean'

Fay Godwin created the book ‘The Secret Forest of Dean’ entirely of rambles and visits she did in the forest area and not to be seen as a guide book; she has included a map of the location though, but she intended it to be seen as a journey book with images and text joining together to show the people who help keep the landscape beautiful and the outcome of it. It is seen as a portrait of the Forest of Dean, but from an outsider perspective because she isn't from this area.

“To find the heart of Dean one must dig deep to a history older than the Druids, feel the vitality in the soil and in the people and forgive the harshness and ugliness that sometimes scars those idyllic woods.” –page 8

This quote is from ‘Introduction by Edna Healey’ because she was brought up in the Forest of Dean and she initially doubted Fay Godwin because she saw her as a ‘foreigner’ as she wasn't from there, but her photography skills, passion for photographing the area and walking there so much, exposing 200 rolls of film, over a total of 18 visits, mainly when the tourists eased from going there.

This book is another example of different reasons for photographing the landscape, she photographed here because she rambled there a lot and used her knowledge of the landscape and people there to portray an interesting location. 

Edna Healey (1986). The Secret Forest of Dean - Fay Godwin. Great Britain: Redcliffe Press and Arnolfini Gallery. 7-11.

Studium and Punctum - Roland Barthes

“What I feel about these photographs derives from an average affect, almost from certain training. I did not know a French word which might account for this kind of human interest, but I believe this exists in Latin; it is studium, which doesn’t mean, or at least immediately “to study,” but application to a thing, taste of someone, a kind of general, enthusiastic commitment, of course, but without special acuity. It is by the studium that I am interested in so many photographs, whether I receive them as political testimony or enjoy them as good historical scenes: for it is culturally (this connotation is present in studium) that I participate in the figures, the faced, the gestures, the settings, the actions” Chapter 10 pages 25-26

"The studium is the order of liking, not loving; it mobilizes a half desire, a demi-volition; it is the same sort of vague, slippery, irresponsible interest one takes in people, the entertainments, the books, the clothes one finds "all right." To recognize the studium is inevitably to encounter the photographer's intentions, to enter into harmony with them, to approve or disapprove them, but it is always to understand them, to argue them within myself, for culture (from which the studium derives) is a contract arrived at between creators and customers.” Chapter 11, pages 27-28

“For Punctum is also; sting, speck, cut, little hole – and also cast of the dice. A photograph’s punctum is the accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me).”

This is basically saying that the studium is something in the image that creates an interest for the viewer. However, the punctum is the point of impact, which is a meaning in the image that may have originally been hidden.

Roland Barthes (1982). Camera Lucida. London: Vintage. 25-28

Complete Change of Mind

After my first tutorial and some more thought on what I could realistically focus on, I have decided to begin with Landscapes. The other two subjects I previously took an interest to were so open and broad I didn't know where to begin and knew I would struggle the place identity relationship theories and others linked.

 I am still really interested in this subject but I think I can happily begin with Landscapes as a starting point and progress my knowledge further with it.

Last semester John Blakemore gave us a lecture about his life as a photographer and the work he has made along the way. He went in depth into one of his first projects in Wales where he shot the landscape of this specific location (will go more in depth in next post) and I then responded to this lecture and I too photographed in Wales.

 My boyfriend lives in the Valley’s in a town called Abertillery, and every time I stay there just me and Sean take the dog for a walk in the forest up the mountain at the top of his street. I had never photographed the landscape there before because I saw it as an escape and just me and Sean time, although I know some photographers would be shocked by this. 

My images became very personal to me so I really was proud of them, but will look into this more weather this can change our views on landscape photography, and different reasons in taking landscape images and the power behind that.