Jem Southam
Southam is one of the leading landscape photographers and is still photographing to present day since the 1970s. Southam was born in Bristol, and went to Falmouth university to study photography and is now a professor in Plymouth University. Being renowned for his rural landscape photography where he documents subtle change in environments over time, he always returns over several years to photograph the same place and how it has changed.
His photos are characterized by the observation of the different cycles of when he takes the photographs were he juxtaposes different images and shows the change.
Southam uses a large 8x10 format camera that uses negatives to make sure there is a high level of detail which is what draws the viewers eyes. From the negatives he makes C- types and the pictures are enlarged from the negatives.
These two images similarly look like they are part of the same image and I think they would work quite well as a diptych and I like the use of colour in Southam's work.
Throughout his work he is always questioning and his relationship with the world and to share it with others, his work is a shared experience and its an investigation of what landscape means exactly and the experience of landscape to us. Every piece of work he has done has related to water and so he has continued that on throughout his work and whenever he shoots he wanted to explore more of the world apart form where he lived on the coast of England.
The restlessness of humanity, made him become quite engaged in that idea and the physical matter of the universe. Wanting to move forward and being involved in contemporary life and travelling as said "we're all wanderers wondering the globe."
Being wanderers wondering to globe is interesting as we are always gaining more knowledge of the world and we can do that through exploring different places. Something that will be thinking of when I plan the different shoots, to just go out and wander intake the world explore and see what is around you that can interest you.
https://huxleyparlour.com/in-film/jem-southam-the-long-white-cloud/
The rockfalls of Normandy
Southam reflects and studies effects of time, he revisited the same sites each time over the course of a few years, he indulges in the subtle beauty of colour and detail in his images as well as texture.
His images consist of some sorts of erosion over the courses over the years, showing geological time in subject matter, as well as exploring human relationship and mankind along side nature and how we have affected it in some sort of way. The photographs depicts the different rock and cliff formations along the South- West of England throughout Devon and Dorset and in France, Normandy.
He is quite interested in the forces at play in the landscape and the processes of erosion especially with fragile structures and in which forces of gravity pull the structures down over a period of time. Over time he returns to the landslide/slips and rockfall sited, to document and record the changes and through doing that he creates visual representation of times. Through taking these pictures he has a yearning to understand and have deeper knowledge of the different changes throughout the years.
He also reveals past depictions and and marks of the landscape and by photographing the English coast and parts of the coast on France his audience is to address geopolitics, as well as systems and histories that impose our knowledge upon the natural landscape.
A Sudden Squall, The Stirling Falls, Milford Sound, New Zealand, Autumn 2018
I quite like this image, its quite different to the rest of his images that are in colour and the waves and the atmosphere and the mood of the image. I want to try capture something like that. You have the waterfall contrasting the hills next to it to it brings your attention to the waterfall mostly. I like the triptych and how it has all been put together and this sequence was when he explored New Zealand and he looked at the different landmarks there and again uses concept of water within his work. During his 6 week journey through the north and south Islands. He gained inspiration from constantly shifting from air to cloud to water again and how that affected the styles of pictures he took as there is different, atmospheres and conditions.
'Fascinated by the tumbling rain cascades and waterfalls that appear after a heavy rainfall at Milford Sound; a physical manifestation of the intricate and fragile relationship between the landscape and the weather, between the land and sky.'
His work includes investigation between the human relationships with the landscape and how they interact with their surroundings. In my project I'm also going to explore this and our relationship with the world and explore that further both through rural and landscape photography.
For my next shoot I'm going to go around near the coast and try capture some similar images in colour and some in black and white as well.
"Aeoteroa’, or ‘The Land of the Long White Cloud’, was the name given to the North Island of New Zealand when the Maori navigators first saw signs of the new land in the formations of drawn out strands of cloud spreading across the horizon. It is the dynamic at the heart of this apparition that these pictures aim to explore. The remarkably rich and varied physical profusion of landforms of New Zealand apprehended and made manifest through the momentary shifts of light and the weather. "
