Assignment 1. First Draft

For Assignment 1 we are required to prepare a PDF document with the intention of showing it to an industry professional and ask them politely for a short piece of feedback.  The PDF should be submitted in the first instance to our tutor for their feedback and modification before sending out 'into the world'.  IAs part of my networking I have secured an agreement from a range of people to as for feedback: a practising fine art photographer, an artist and curator, a gallery owner, the curator of Hull PhotoHub and a post graduate, exhibiting art group, East Coast 7.  All are happy to have a PDF of the work emailed to them, but some I am in personal contact with and so can have a face to face meeting.  Although I am posting this as a blog it is also saved as a PDF.

Artist Statement

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

Introduction

Shul

The Tibetan word for a track is shul which means "a mark that remains after that which made it has passed by - a footprint, for example.  A path is a shul because it is the impression in the ground left by the regular tread of feet, which has kept it clear of obstructions and maintained it for the use of others."  (Solnit, 2005, P.51).  My work focuses on woodland paths and walking them allows me to slow down, to fully experience and appreciate the landscape through which I travel.

Like artists and photographer Hamish Fulton, Richard Long and Paul Gaffney I have long found walking to be a meditative experience (Turner Contemporary website, 2012;  Global Archive Photography, 2015).  Roger Deakin writes ‘To enter a wood is to pass into a different world in which we ourselves are transformed.  It is where you travel to find yourself, often, paradoxically, by getting lost.’ (Deakin, 2007, P. X).  

Following a woodland path is not straightforward.  The horizon is limited.  Woods muffle external sounds leaving only birdsong, the rustling of leaves or the creaking of trees in the wind.  Choices have to be made.  The path may be broad and well-defined; boundaries may be clear with wild and tangled undergrowth beyond.  Other paths are less definite, ephemeral, a trace of a path.  Perhaps there will only be a bent blade of grass or scuffed leaves that indicate that something has passed this way.  Is the decision made to remain on the wider track, safer, more secure where many have travelled before; or is it to follow the less sure route and, if so, what is to be found at its furthest extremity?  Nothing - just the wood?  Or is there a way forward by making one’s own path and forging a new route?

Bibliography

Bowditch, T and Rochowski, N. (2016) Paul Gaffney Global Archive Photography Available from: http://globalarchivephotography.com/project/paul-gaffney/  [Accessed 23.2.16]

Fulton, H. (2017) Hamish Fulton [online] Available from:

http://www.hamish-fulton.com/ [Accessed 18.4.17]

Gaffney, P.(2017) Paul Gaffney [online] Available from:  http://www.paulgaffneyphotography.com/ [Accessed 18.4.17]

Long, R.  (2017) Richard Long [online] Available from:

http://www.richardlong.org/ [Accessed 18.4.17]

Rohrauer. C (2014) Claudia Rohrauer [online] Available from: http://www.claudiarohrauer.info/?/work/photo-trekking/ [Accessed 18.4.17]

Solnit, R. (2014) Wanderlust, A History of Walking, London, Granta 

Turner Contemporary (2012) Hamish Fulton: Walk  [online] Available from: https://www.turnercontemporary.org/media/documents/Hamish-Fulton-background-resource.pdf [Accessed 18.04.17

Images