Exhibition
I visited the Photographer’s Gallery and came across an exhibition by Paul Hart called Farmed, also published at his own website (https://www.paulhartphotography.com/farmed-2/). Hart has captured a series of images across the fens that focus on encapsulating the ‘flatness’ of the area but which is dotted with man made elements. His images are aimed at capturing the those elements in a way that shows them in the vast open and flat landscape.
His aim resonates with me as I used to live in that area for a number of years and the flatness is the feature that I remember most.
The images were presented in black and white, and most of them around 1 metre wide. Two of his images are shown below in Fig 1 and 2.
Reflection
Most of his images follow one of two recipes, I chose one of each for this post. In Fig 1 we see a building surrounded by flat open space, in Fig 2 we see some strong leading lines pointing to an item of interest.
I found that one image alone created an aesthetically pleasing image to look at but as I looked at the wider collection, I felt that they became a bit ‘samey’. I remember that I did this in my original Assignment 1, I thought that the images were different but essentially they all just looked along paths.
I found myself thinking that this is a shame as some of the images did nicely remind me of wide open flat spaces of the fens. To be clear, many of the images are visually fantastic and technically perfect, it is simply that I feel there are too many, that follow the same formula for it be an interesting collection as a whole.
At the time I visited this exhibition, I was capturing and editing my Assignment 5 submission. Some of the images are very similar to those that I am capturing and so this visit has served as a good reminder to make sure that each of my images brings its own uniqueness and tells a story as per the brief.
Figures
Hart, P. (2016). North Ing. [image] Available at: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/572484ce37013b4a806dbeb9/59848468be6594bb037988b7/5984864ef9a61e76c6efc455/1501857372321/Lynn+Way.jpg?format=750w [Accessed 3 Mar. 2018].
Hart, P. (2016). Holbeach St Mathew. [image] Available at: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/572484ce37013b4a806dbeb9/59848468be6594bb037988b7/59848563c534a5814d9c34cf/1501859947644/Holbeach+St.+Matthew.jpg?format=750w [Accessed 3 Mar. 2018].