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.