NOTEBOOK SPOTLIGHT: The Rise of Summer commission Commissioned by the Bishop of Bristol’s Office for the Rt Revd Vivienne Faull and her husband Dr Michael Duddridge, on the occasion of Bishop Viv’s retirement in August 2025. The Rise of Summer is a photographic landscape panorama, depicting composite elements of the Bishop of Bristol’s garden at Church Lane in […]
A luminous garden in Bristol Read More »
NOTEBOOK SPOTLIGHT: Genesis and The New Passage Genesis was created from 60 photographs, taken from incrementally different angles, of butterfly wings suspended in a fish tank; The New Passage was created from 12 photographs taken at half-hour intervals from this spot on the Severn Estuary, UK. In each case the images are interlaced by a computer programme which
Lenticular lenses in view Read More »
It’s a commonplace to find photography and the Bible linked through particularly simple illustration: if you pick up any modern guide to the Bible, you’ll invariably find a book or website with photographs of the landscape of Palestine and Syria, or of its flora & fauna, or of archaeological remains. Occasionally an image might zone
Reading between the Bible lines in Tacita Dean’s desert Read More »
Highest tide of the year today. And possibly the highest workmen in the South West. Out at Aust, the pylon in the Severn Estuary is having a make-over, thanks to Ivan and his dare-devil team of four. Something mesmerizing about the air, space-clean, superhigh and white, with tiny figures and water at 14m. The bracket
Perspectives on the Severn Read More »
Garry Fabian Miller first showed Series 1 of the Sea Horizon series in 1977, and 2 years later, at the Arnolfini in Bristol. These 40 photographs were then published in 1997, and exhibited again at the Arnolfini (also in London), which is where I first saw them, aged 16. My visual diary entry that day:
Garry Fabian Miller in Edinburgh Read More »
The most pressing issue in the photography of place is a site’s history, how it has been affected by time, by climate and by mankind. Landscape photography has become political, not necessarily in terms of environmental causes – although many photographers are directly concerned with such issues – but in terms of the meanings it
What’s in it for the landscape photographer? Read More »
The beauty of the place was infinite and heartbreaking. Emerson, in love with the landscape, overlooked nothing, from winter’s mists to summer’s fullness. Yet such opulence was beyond the scope of photography and, eventually realizing this, Emerson had to content himself with exquisite miniature pictures of frozen earth, mists and far horizons – winter landscape,
Emerson and the beauty of ‘Marsh Leaves’ Read More »
Muybridge: a 19th century, postmodern photographer. Comparing his work to that of his contemporary Carleton E. Watkins, Rebecca Solnit (with acknowledgement to Mark Klett’s remarks about the ‘composed’ modernism of Watkins’ photographs) writes: Muybridge, even when photographing almost exactly the same subjects, could not be more different. In his sensibility, the world is all but
Eadweard Muybridge reflections Read More »
My opinion of Hockney’s work was polarized by this RA exhibition. The garish painting, the ipad drawings and the canvas-stacking overload of much of this show had gone day-glo, overblown. The film and the photographic collages, however, were like fresh air breathing through so much stuck paint. Space and time were lifted, expanded, filled and
Hockney reviewed in 100 words Read More »
Just started reading Martin Palmer’s ‘The Sacred History of Britain’ – soon to launch his ‘Sacred Land’ book at St Stephen’s Church next week. The landscape around us in terms of geography and man’s design is a relationship characterised by sacred elements – we can’t just read it as a process of urbanisation and technology.
Reflecting on ‘earth’ for spirituality Read More »
