Pete Davis, In Wildwood.

Pete Davis

For 18 years Dr Pete Davis was a senior lecturer in Documentary Photography at the University of Wales, Newport, South Wales and for 9 of those years he was course leader.  He is currently visiting lecturer at several universities as well as being involved with his own projects and collaborations.  He is widely internationally exhibited and in 2017 had a retrospective exhibition at the National Library of Wales.  I came across Pete Davis while carrying out some other research and was amazed when I saw that he had completed a body of work entitled In Wildwood.  Intrigued I managed to locate some of these images and was amazed at how similar his work was to that to my series Impenetrable Woodland as part of my Bewildered project.  Researching further I managed to get hold of a second hand copy of the book.

In Wildwood.

I was particularly taken with Davis' quote from Robert Frost's 1920 poem 'The Road Not Taken':-

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -

I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.

Not only do I feel that this epitomises my work in Shul, but is a good description of my photography.  I could have remained in my comfortable rut enjoying my traditional wildlife and landscape photography, but I signed on to study for my OCA degree.  At times earlier on during Level 3 I was tempted to stop as I felt I was struggling.  However encouragement from peers and tutors helped me to continue and take 'the road less travelled'.  (OK enough of the sentimental stuff!!)  In his introduction Pete Davis tells us that he has always been fascinated by woodland and through this project he has attempted to encapsulate many of his ideas by concentrating on this one topic.  He discusses the importance of forests to man and his long association with them and goes on to suggest that the term 'wildwood' can evoke images of remoteness and danger as well as sinister beauty.  He moves on to say, though, that the wildwoods of his project owe their presence and visual appearance to centuries of management and human intervention.  In the work he says that he has tried to encapsulate many of the elements of the wider landscape that have featured in his work over the years: beauty, mystery, myth, spirituality and history.

In an essay that accompanies the book Conway Lloyd Morgan discusses the occurrence of forests in literature such as Tolkein's Lord of the Rings, but goes on to say that forests were part of a shared landscape : respected, not owned, but not hostile or alien either.  He tells us that Pete Davis is a Welsh photographer for whom such managed forests have become a major subject in recent years.  He explains that photographing a forest is not an easy thing to, especially with the large-format (10x8) field camera that Davis uses along with its associated tripod, plates and lenses.  Not only is the weight considerable but he could only take 10 images in a session so each one had to count.  It was also a problem of when to photograph; if he had done recces with a smaller camera conditions would have been different when he returned with the large-format gear so the opportunity had to be taken when it arose.  We are told that the images do not document the history or archaeology of forests, nor animal activity or seasonal changes; instead they invite the viewer  to construct an indepentent narrative for the space in much the same way that I hope my images in Shul do.

I found the images in this book entrancing; I can look at them time and again.  I like to think that my work evokes the same response.  I would have loved to have seen these photographs at 2x3m on a gallery wall.