And here’s a trailer for Zvyagintsev’s The Return-

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In reference to yesterday’s post, here’s an interesting video interview with the Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky talking about art.

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Apologies for this unrelated plug, but my Polyarnye Nochi series, which was all shot in and around Russia’s Kola Peninsula, will be exhibited in the upcoming Format Festival in Derby, which officially opens next Thursday 5th March.

The theme this year is PHOTOCINEMA, which is described by curator Louise Clements in the following way:

“From film still to still film the theme for FORMAT09 is positioned in the half-light between these two narrative and technical sensibilities, colliding – fact with fiction, historicism with fantasy, and reality with the cinematic. The festival contains the work of artists who extend the ‘still’ image in time through the use of photo-narrative sequencing, directed or documentary photography and moving image from single still to feature film.”

Unforgiving and dramatic winters have often been regarded as one of Russia’s most defining characteristics.  A Russian winter is redolent both of great hardship but also great beauty and for centuries it has been romanticised in the country’s painting, music and cinema. A continuation of my exploration of contemporary Russian society and partly inspired by Russian cinema, Polyarnye Nochi explores the winter landscapes of Northern Russia during a period known as Polar Nights, when the region is shrouded in darkness nearly 24 hours a day. To find out more about the work, you can download an article by the writer Alexandra Lennox, entitled ‘The influence, inspiration and interplay of Simon Robert’s Polyarnye Nochi and Russian cinema,’ here.

This will be the first major exhibition of the series and will be exhibited in the main programme in the Quad Gallery along with work by Hannah Starkey, Muge, Zhang Xiao, Gregory Crewdson, William Eggleston, Cindy Sherman, Jonas Mekas, Eric Baudelaire, David Lynch, Mark Read, Nichola Dove, Bethany Murray, Magnum Cinema, Pang Xuan.

As part of the festival I will be conducting a day’s seminar on 25th March from 10.30am -4.30pm, which is open to all practicing photographers. The seminar will focus on my career development, strategies for realising personal projects, practical advice and portfolio feedback. Then in the evening I’ll be delivering an Artist Talk where I’ll discuss the series and it’s interplay with Russian cinema. It will be followed by a screening of Andrei Zvyagintsev’s superb film The Return (2003).

Both events can be booked through QUAD Box Office on 01332 290606 or by going to the Derby Quad website here.

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Every year the Royal Photographic Society promotes a series of regional lectures, supporting events for members across the UK. The Society have asked me to be this year’s speaker and I will be delivering seven lectures across the country where I’ll be presenting and discussing photographs from Motherland and We English.

If you’re interested in coming along to one of the talks, you can download a pdf with more details here.

The next lectures will be-

Bath, Sunday 8th March

Bovey Tracey, Dorset – Saturday 14th March

West Maling, Kent – Saturday 10th April

Edinburgh, Scotland – Satuday 16th May

East Anglia – Sunday 18th October

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I was at Michael Hoppen Gallery yesterday and had the chance to see the work of Japanese photographer Hiromi Tsuchida. I was particular excited to see a series of exhibition prints from his book Counting Grains of Sand (Published: Tosei-Sha, May 2005).

Born in Fukui Prefecture in 1939 Tsuchida studied engineering before enrolling in the Tokyo College of Photography in 1965 where he was later to return as a professor. He began his career as a publicity photographer for a cosmetics company but quickly decided to become a freelance photographer in 1971. Tsuchida began Counting Grains of Sand in the second half of the 1970s and the series explores how the Japanese people interact and function in a crowd, with each person a ‘grain of sand’. He decided to stop working on the series in 1989, when the ‘crowd to end all crowds’ came to mourn the death of Emperor Hirohito. However, during the 1990s he began work on the series again as he was struck by the shifting dynamic of the crowd in the today’s Japan. Crowds were no longer seas of people but had become a network of small groups that maintained a certain distance from each other.

Untitled, Tokyo © Hiromi Tsuchida, 1996

Untitled, Gotemba © Hiromi Tsuchida, 2002

Untitled, Tottori © Hiromi Tsuchida, 2002

Untitled, Tokyo © Hiromi Tsuchida, 2003

Tsuchida attempts to express the changes in Japanese culture and society through his work, analyzing the distance within crowds and the clash between tradition and modernity that structures Japanese society. His photographs have been described as “the intersection between the individual and the communal, within the global context of urbanization and consumerism.” And it has been said that his work highlights the “unification brought about by the sacred and the profane within the context of a society with this dual structure. Doing so he captures a universal element that exists outside of time and indifferent to western influences.”

His vivid use of colour give the images an almost hyper-real quality and help convey a sense of claustrophobia while at the same time the crowds seem very ordered.

You can see a few more of Tsuchida’s work on Artnet here.

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“Fay Godwin is one of our best known landscape photographers, a master of scenery in black and white, and incidentally, working out in photography a long-tradition of subtly depicting the politics of the British countryside.” Chris Townsend, Hot Shoe , July 1999

Following on from my recent posts about photographers looking at the politicised nature of the English countryside (Dark Days and Tomorrow We Enter Paradise) I want to turn to the work of noted British photographer Fay Godwin (17 February 1931 – 27 May 2005). A photographer who, having established herself in portraiture, became known for her black and white landscape photographs which often had a political strand. Indeed in later years her photographs became a more overt criticism of the environmental damage and access restrictions imposed on the land, across England.

Influenced by Bill Brandt and Paul Strand, she looks for the narrative in her landscapes, choosing to record man’s relationship with the environment.

Top Withens, Calder Valley © Fay Godwin, 1977

“I had no aspirations to become a landscape photographer at all. In fact it was portraiture that was my beginning, I suppose. I have always been a very keen walker, though, and I often took a camera with me on my walks. But I was, and still am, an avid reader and so when I first started I chose to photograph many of the great writers in this country to try and earn a living.” Fay Godwin, 2004

Callanish after hailstorm, Lewis © Fay Godwin, 1980

Godwin was self-taught, her interest developed during the 1960s through taking pictures of her young family. Having established herself in literary portraiture, she moved onto publishing her landscape work in a series of walkers’ books (see full list here). In 1978, she received an award from the UK arts council, and her best known exhibition ‘Land’ was shown at the Serpentine Gallery in London, 1985, and is regarded by many as the finest study of British landscape ever published setting new standards in British landscape photography.

While I appreciate Godwin’s landscape photographs, the images I’m really drawn to are those which present a dry humour and, much like Tony Ray-Jones, a keen eye for the quietly absurd. Here are some of my favourite photographs, which can be found in the ‘snaps’ section of her website:

Leaping lurcher © Fay Godwin, 1972

Bison at Chalk Farm © Fay Godwin, 1981

Soldiers and bullocks, Romney Marsh © Fay Godwin, 1973

Rye Carnival © Fay Godwin, 1985

Cricket at Sandwich © Fay Godwin, 1981

From 1979 Godwin started experimenting in colour, which eventually led to a deliberate attempt to move out of the black and white landscape genre. This was helped through a Fellowship at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, (Bradford 1987/8) culminating in an exhibition ‘Bradford in Colour’. During the early 1990s, Godwin’s eventual move to colour close-ups was widely misinterpreted as a necessity due to failing health, rather than creative progression. Godwin’s own view was: “Because in a dreary British way, I had been pigeon-holed as a black and white photographer and at my age it was not permissible to move on.”

Boys in River, Salts Mill © Fay Godwin, 1987

“I’ve always been interested in our relationship with the land. There is so much of great beauty and historical interest, but when I look at the British Isles I am also angered and saddened by the relentless butchering of our heritage by money-grabbing corporations.” Fay Godwin, 2004

Ponden Moor © Fay Godwin, 1987

In 2001 Godwin was honoured with a major retrospective, ‘Landmarks’ at the Barbican Centre, in London. Landmarks went on to tour internationally. An associated book was published by Dewi Lewis.

“I don’t get wrapped up in technique and the like. I have a simple rule and that is to spend as much time in the location as possible. You can’t expect to take a definitive image in half an hour. It takes days, often years. And in fact I don’t believe there is such a thing as a definitive picture of something. The land is a living, breathing thing and light changes its character every second of every day. That’s why I love it so much.” Fay Godwin, 2004

Interestingly I came across this photograph by Godwin:

Sleeping Fisherman, Dungeness © Fay Godwin, 1974

Which reminds me of a similar photograph I took last summer for We English:

Fisherman, Sizewell Power Station © Simon Roberts, 2008

You can read a longer biography of Godwin here and the last interview she gave with David Corfield for Practical Photography in December 2004 here (where her quotes are taken from above).

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I’m back at my desk after a couple of weeks on the road and now returning to my editing. One of the joys of this stage of the project is discovering themes in your work that you weren’t necessarily aware of while producing it. For instance, looking through my initial edit of photographs I can’t help notice how notions of boundaries re-appears throughout the work. How the photographs, somewhat inadvertently, are exploring the relationships between people and place against the understated drama of geographical boundaries. For instance, the physical landscapes are shot through with rivers, trees, hedges that create physical divisions, just as the people themselves create their own personalised environments as they attempt to express their own sense of identity by colonising the spaces around them.  Moreover, many of the leisure activities I photographed often occurr at boundary points: the edge of cities, next to lakes and reservoirs, alongside footpaths and mountain ridges.

Here are a few examples-

Bank End Farm Fishery, Blaxton, Lincolnshire, 5th January 2008

Woolacombe beach, Devon, 23rd May 2008

Malvern Hills, Worcestershire, 16th May 2008

Westward Ho, Devon, 24th May 2008

River Thames, Oxford, 28th June 2008

Cotswold Water Park, Gloucestershire, 12th May 2008

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