• Where I am now is discussed in posts below. I’m experimenting. Learning. Growing. And just beginning to think about where – other than IG &I FB – my work might find an audience. It’s exciting but still – necessarily – vague.
• The nature and intent of my practice is discussed in posts below. I’m a landscape photographer – I guess – but I like working in abstractions and details. I want to evoke the sensory experience, idiosyncracies, politics and history of the places I visit. I want to draw critically on established approaches – e.g. the picturesque, banal details a la Shore – and harness them to my thematic intentions.
• At the moment, my work is consumed here, on IG, FB and that’s it! I’m hoping conservation charities will find a use for my work for promotion or evidence, either online or in print, and I’m interested in using my work in academic settings – whatever those are, and this is something I need to explore. I think my end goal is a book in which writing plays a crucial part. I’m currently investigating ways of turning my M5 motorway bridge project into a book. Early days, and I’ve no idea about format, audience, cost, or collaborations. These are all things I’m exploring but don’t really have anything worth discussing here.
• My practice is interwoven with film work, and it’s possible I’ll be doing some filming on the commons I’m focussing on currently – possibly for money. I’m interested in the possibilities that photography opens out that film doesn’t, especially the very different experience of time through the two media. As an online project, of course, these two could co-exist. I’m interested, too, in interrelationships with text – also having a background in writing. I’m exploring works that chime with my own interests, such Joel Sternfeld’s sparse but eloquent text in On This Site and Campagna Romana, John Kippin’s Cold War Pastoral, which is interwoven with essays, and Dominick Tyler’s Uncommon Ground, a hybrid work that perhaps is closest to what I want to achieve. Critically, I’m embedding myself deeper in the traditions of landscape art through Andrews’ Landscape and Western Art, nature writing through Robert MacFarlane’s Landmarks, anthropology through Matthew Engelke’s Think Like an Anthropologist, critical geography through Doreen Massey’s For Space, and photography through Geoffrey Batchen’s Each Wild Idea. When I finish Batchen’s book, which I’m loving, I’ll write up a separate post reflecting back on it – as will I be reflecting in greater depth on my reading and photography research elsewhere in this journal.

Andrews, M. 1999. Landscape and Western Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Batchen, G. 2002. Each Wild Idea. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Engelke, M. 2017. Think Like An Anthropologist. London: Pelican.

Kippin, J. 2001. Cold War Pastoral. London: Black Dog Publishing.

MacFarlane, R. 2016. Landmarks. London: Penguin.

Massey, D. 2005. For Space. London: Sage Publications Ltd.

Sternfeld, J. 1992. Campagna Romana. New York: Alfred A Knopf Inc.

Sternfeld, J. 1996. On This Site. Göttingen: Steidl.

Tyler, D. 2015. Uncommon Ground: A word-lover’s guide to the British landscape. London: Guardian Books.