I’ve seen a couple of Davies’ images before, and have been keen to investigate further. There’s a studied melancholy but vitality to those I’ve seen, and his use of line and space and engagement with social and geographical history chime with my own interests. His work is deeply political inasmuch as it makes the viewer consider the politics embedded in the image, and is never didactic. It is critical of industry and power but nevertheless celebrates human endeavour and labour. He confronts nostalgia and the contradictions of a cultural love of the natural environment.

Looking through A Green & Pleasant Land (1987), I’m struck by the aesthetic as well as thematic interconnections. Largely shot, I imagine, large format, there’s a love of detail and an embrace of sky, even where it’s largely featureless. Sky is something I like but am anxious about in my own work, and which I began exploring as a part of an image this summer. Davies has typologies – bridges, brick, waterways, tall structures, railway and motorways, housing estate grids, recreational green space – that interconnect the photos, creating unity.

I’m willing to consider large format – eventually. Commons are often wide spaces and perhaps they are best depicted that way. I’m not sure about black and white – though I do enjoy it, and sometimes feel it’s the best match for a shot, I’m enjoying the colour available through my Sony, with the hyperreal touch it adds to my images in post-production. I think, however, that I’ll need to do further research and visit a lot more commons before I develop a typology. I’m getting there, though.

Davies, J., Wood, M., & Powell, R. 1987. A Green & Pleasant Land. Manchester: Cornerhouse Publications.

My first visit to the MPF library of 5000+ photobooks was a revelation. The staff were helpful, supportive, genuinely interested in my reason for visiting, and put some really key texts in front of me on the table. I was there for over two hours. Next time, it’ll be longer.

Simon Roberts’ We English (2009) explores the many ways that open space is used in the UK, from car boot sales to grouse hunting. He manages to work with both the micro and macro uses of space, and his full-frame images, with expansive skies or vast tracts of land taken from an elevated viewpoint, are ambitious and surprisingly tender. Ignoring the myriad practical reasons for not using this myself, it’s certainly one to have floating around in the background for big spaces as commons often are.

Susan Trangmar (2008) is a multi-media artist of long standing and her photobook A Play in Time uses stills from the AHRC-funded film that results from a year’s immersion in a Brighton path. These are sequenced chronologically and there’s a DVD of the film at the back of the book. The book also includes critical responses from 4 writers. The texts act as interludes.

Fay Godwin & Ted Hughes’ Remains of Elmet (1979) is another immersive text-photo fusion, Hughes’ poetry prompted by Godwin’s exploration of the Hebden Bridge/ Howarth area to record the last traces of their mills (and which includes a shot almost identical to one I took this summer). Writing and image work as a call and response.

Larry Sultan’s Pictures from Home (1992) shows Sultan to be as proficient a writer as a photographer. This is one to return to – it’s a photobook that needs to be read (although the photos themselves powerfully stand on their own merits). Text and image are interwoven and respond to one another, including both archival and project images. The writing is a memoir of family life. Exquisite

Aaron Schuman’s Slant (2019) is a quirky collection of American ephemera very much in the Walker Evans mould, interspersed with newspaper neighbourhood watch cuttings, some of which are laugh-out-loud funny. The joke does start to wane after a while, and there seems to be a lack of overall structure.

Paul Strand & Basil Davidon’s Tir A Mhurain (1962) is the result of a joint residency in Uist, each responding to investigations of people and place, tender and tough, high concept and deeply humane. Strand’s photographs range from documentary to landscape to abstract. Davidson’s text are typically factual, historically-based travel writing. Economic but poised. Images and text are like having two presenters complementing one another, focussed on the same subject, with a similar engagement, but very different forms of expression. Again, one to return to reading next time. The collaboration continued beyond this book.

Godwin, F., & Hughes, T. 1979. Remains of Elmet.  London: Rainbow Press.

Roberts, S. 2009. We English. London: Chris Boot. 

Schuman, A. 2019. Slant. London: Mack Books. 

Strand, P., & Davidson, B. 1962. Tir A Mhurain. London: MacGibbon & Kee.

Sultan, S. 1992. Pictures From Home. New York: Harry N. Abrams. 

Trangmar, S. 2008. A Play in Time. Brighton: Photoworks.