November 19th, 2013 admin
For nearly a decade Jason Orton and Ken Worpole have collaborated on documenting the changing landscape and coastline of Essex, particularly its estuaries, islands and urban edgelands. They continue to explore many aspects of contemporary landscape topography and architecture. They have just released a new book called The New English Landscape.
The New English Landscape critically examines the changing geography of landscape aesthetics since the Second World War, noting the shift away from the arcadian interior to the contested eastern shoreline. It discusses how writers and artists gravitated towards East Anglia, and latterly towards Essex, regarding them as sites of significant topographical disruption, often as a result of military or industrial occupation.
These are landscapes of unique ecological and imaginative resonance, particularly following the Thames, and the islands and estuaries of its northerly coastal peninsula. The book assesses the past, present and future of this new territorial aesthetic, now subject to much debate in the contested worlds of landscape design, topography and psycho-geography.
The book contains 22 colour photographs, an 18,000 word essay, extensive bibliography, maps, and is a medium-to-large format paperback.
ISBN 978-0-9926669-0-3
Price £15.00
Ways to buy The New English Landscape can be found here.
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September 13th, 2013 admin
Only in England: Photographs by Tony Ray-Jones and Martin Parr
21 September 2013 – 16 March 2014
The first major exhibition at the new Media Space in London will be Only in England: Photographs by Tony Ray-Jones and Martin Parr, drawing from the Tony Ray-Jones archive at the National Media Museum. The exhibition is curated by Greg Hobson, curator of Photographs at the National Media Museum, and Martin Parr has been invited to select works from the Tony Ray-Jones archives.
Find out more about the exhibition here: http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/plan_your_visit/exhibitions/only_in_england.aspx
About Media Space-
Opening in September 2013, Media Space will showcase the National Photography Collection held by the National Media Museum through a series of major exhibitions. A collaboration between the Science Museum and the National Media Museum, Media Space will also invite photographers, artists and the creative industries to respond to the wider collections of the Science Museum Group to explore visual media, technology and science.
Media Space will be based on the second floor of the Science Museum. It is a £4 million capital project and will include a 500 m² gallery for major exhibitions, a Virgin Media Studio for installations, events and creative workshops, and a café/bar. Hannah Redler was announced as Head of Media Space and Science Museum Arts Programme in 2012.
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Brighton Beach, 1952
(Gelatin silver print, 14 1/2 x 20 inches, 2010)
© Edwin Smith / RIBA British Architectural Library Photographs Collection
I’ve recently been made aware of the work of Edwin Smith (1912 – 1971), the English architectural and landscape photographer (I’m slightly embarrassed to say I’d not come across his work before embarking on We English).
Here’s a short bio from the V&A’s website (they hold a collection of his prints) – Smith’s photographs illustrated many books dealing with ‘English Cottages and Farmhouses‘ (1954), ‘English Parish Churches‘ (1952) and ‘Hatfield House‘ (1973). From the Second World War onwards, Smith began to look at rural Britain and architectural subjects. In the 1950’s, he illustrated a number of books on the landscape and architecture of Britain, including English Parish Churches, English Cottages and Farmhouses and The English Gardens. By the time of his death in 1971 Smith had illustrated more than 30 such volumes. Apart from these numerous book commissions, he often photographed simply to note and capture nuances of civic life. His photographs are testimony to the sympathetic approach he adopted towards British life and landscape.
You can see a selection of Smith’s prints at Chris Beetles gallery in London and on their website here.
And there’s more about Smith’s work at these links-
http://www.fine-photographs.co.uk/index.php/life-work/es-life-work-list
http://www.luminous-lint.com/app/vexhibit/_PHOTOGRAPHER_Edwin__Smith_01/2/0/0/
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/name/edwin-smith/41201/
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Prints from We English on show at Somerset House as part of the Landmark: Fields of Photography exhibition. More information about the show here and additional installation shots on Flowers Gallery website here.
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Image: Studying a We English print exhibited at Landmark, Somerset House, March 2013
The online magazine Distorted Arts has reviewed my We English work, which currently features in the Landmark Exhibition at Somserset House.
“Roberts’s photographs reside somewhere between documentary and pure landscape. Many of his images contain poignant vignettes set against dynamic panoramas. Camel Estuary is populated with staffage straining against one another. Their interaction enlivens the scene, while the tamed sea, blue sky and sweeping shore evoke the English tradition of land, leisure and pleasure.
A contemporary archive of Englishness; Roberts’s work captures people, places and events beautifully. Figures in the landscape are small, but significant – the Arcadian shepherds and smiling rural folk of a Victorian landscape are replaced by windswept trekkers, crowded stadiums and post-modern reverie.”
You can read the whole review here.
And you can see a slideshow with some of the images exhibited on the Guardian’s website here.
Landmark: The Fields of Photography at Somerset House from 14 March – 28 April 2013.
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Photograph: Amerta Movement Workshop, Avebury Henge, Wiltshire, 2nd June 2008 © Simon Roberts, from We English
Positive View Foundation has unveiled details of its next major exhibition to be held at London’s Somerset House in London this March – a sweeping overview of the rich genre of 21st Century Landscape photography. The novel exhibition is the first of its kind anywhere to show both the harsh, even brutal realities of the changing environment, as well as its enduring and stunning beauty.
The exhibition will include several of my prints from We English. There is more information available here.
Landmark: the Fields of Photography is a wide-ranging and ground-breaking exhibition featuring more than 70 of the world’s most highly regarded photographers from North and South America, Africa, Europe and Asia, with many of them showcasing previously unseen and recently completed works. It will run from 14th March – 28th April 2013 and is curated by the globally respected curator, William A. Ewing.
Focusing on our rapidly changing planet, ‘Landmark: the Fields of Photography’ features more than 170 original works of art taken by enterprising photographers employing technology ranging from 19th Century plate-camera techniques to the use of planes, drones, robots and even satellites to capture vivid images of earth’s varied terrain – and even distant planets. Many of the major names in photography are represented: Mitch Epstein, Nadav Kandar, Ryan McGinley, Robert Adams, Simon Norfolk, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Lee Friedlander, Simon Roberts, Toshio Shibata, Robert Polidori and many others contributing spectacular imagery. Also featured are striking images by a younger generation of photographers: Pieter Hugo, Susan Evans, Raphael Dallaporta, Penelope Umbrico, Mathieu Bernard-Reymond, and others.
Exhibition hashtag: #LandmarkExhibition
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An exhibition of We English will be on show at the Phos cultural centre in Torino, Italy from 31st January to 1st March 2013.
Join us for the opening on January 31st 2013, 6.30 pm.
Please see the centre’s website for more details- http://www.phosfotografia.com/en/event/we-english/
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December 27th, 2012 admin
China Life Magazine has published a portfolio of photographs from We English in their latest issue.
You can download a pdf of the spread here.
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December 27th, 2012 admin
We English is currently being exhibited at 4RT Contemporary in Lausanne, Switzerland.
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David Cameron on a tour of the Observadores exhibition in Sao Paulo, takes a look at some prints from We English.
Photograph © Everton Amaro.
Observadores: Photographers of the British Scene from the 1930’s to now – in on show at Galeria de Arte do Sesi in Sao Paulo about British photography, organised by the British Council and curated by Joao Kulcsar in San Paulo and Martin Caiger-Smith in London.
Read more about the exhibition
here.
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