I am a photographer living in the east
of England and am currently completing my BA in photography with the Open
College of the Arts. My background is in
wildlife and the grand tradition of landscape photography. As I have progressed through my studies I
have begun to question the way I represent the world. My current work is inspired by wilderness and
the natural world which I explore by walking.
Not the wilderness of wide-open spaces but wilderness on a much smaller
scale. Robert
MacFarlane writes 'I had started
to refocus. I was becoming interested in this understanding of wildness
not as something which was hived off from human life, but which existed
unexpectedly around and within it: in cities, backyards, roadsides, hedges,
field boundaries or spinnies.' (MacFarlane, 2007.pp 226-227). The famous
mountaineer, W.H. Murray, also wrote of the same experience as long ago as
1951and had the same sentiments. 'Through the very uncertainties of our
climb my mind became unusually observant, embracing many simple things that
commonly pass unregarded. While searching for a handhold the eye would
alight on a blade of grass peeping from a crack, and see the amazing grace of
its fluting, the fresh brightness of its green against the rock; and although the
joy was that of one second the memory lived on.' (Murray, 1951, p.62) My work is informed by photographers
and artists such as Eliot Porter, Paul Gaffney, Hamish Fulton and Richard Long
all of whom portray wilderness, often by walking.
MacFarlane, R. (2007) The Wild Places, Granta, London
Murray W.H. (1951) Undiscovered Scotland, Dent Publishing, London
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