Sunday 13 March 2016

The Lark Ascending



More backfiles action, searching for overlooked book-sequence candidates, this time looking at Twyford Down. I love high, rolling chalk downland; it's the countryside I grew up in, and I'm sure part of the appeal to me of the St. Catherine's / Twyford project has been simply to have a reason to walk these hills as often as possible, in any weather, in all seasons.

In southern Britain downland occurs in various bands, where the geological syncline and anticline that ripples up from the south coast, down under the London basin and up again in the Chilterns has eroded away to expose the thick band of Cretaceous chalk that lies between softer layers of clays and sands. These lengths of high, dry upland form natural highways, and routes such as the Ridgeway and the Icknield Way were established in prehistoric times and used until reliable, year-round roads could be laid in the valley bottoms.

Like so much in this little corner of England south-east of Winchester, there is a watchful, slightly haunted air of abandonment. Something strange happens to the light up here. These hills are not particularly high – about 460 feet at their highest point – but on a clear day you get that intense awareness of the thin blue end of the spectrum you get in mountainous regions, and the high warbling of skylarks in summer is its aural equivalent. Cue Vaughan Williams, The Lark Ascending...



I am trying to keep a sense of that watchfulness and that weirdness in this sequence. The main danger in landscape photography, I think, is to succumb to uncomplicated beauty; this is the royal road to "me too" work, the sort of pretty but signature-less imagery that (as I complained in an earlier post, Bye, Bye Landscape Photography, Dear) gets given away anonymously as illustrative material. It's not an easy pitfall to avoid, however aware of it you may be in principle, but it helps if your sensibility is a little skewed, and you generally prefer to take the road less travelled. How far I will have succeeded on this score, I suppose, is not for me to judge. After all, in a quote from Don DeLillo I read recently, "we're all one beat away from becoming elevator music".

5 comments:

Struan said...

Been googling Tristram Hillier of late. Your middle pic has that same balance of careful delineation and subtle oddness.

I'm trying to resist the urge to reject simple beauty. Not falling into the 'I've taken one of those too' trap is more important.

Mike C. said...

Struan,

Funny you should say that -- I was given a book of his "life & work" at Christmas ("Painter Pilgrim", by Jenny Pery), and have been a fan since coming across his volume in the Shell Nature Studies series from the 1950s ("Fossils, Insects, & Reptiles") a few years ago in a second-hand bookshop. I suspect (along with Ravilious) I've been influenced by his way with colour.

Oh, go on, reject simple beauty, too!

Mike

Struan said...

I was brought up short by a painting of his in Edinburgh (Scottish Nat. Gal. of Modern Art, I think, who publish a nice book about their photographs). I don't think it's *just* his fondness for pollards.

I'm trying to learn about colour all over again, having had to accept that carrying heavy cameras *and* walking the wilds are not really compatible any more (no biggie: gout puts me on crutches if I over-stress my joints). It's amazing how much I had internalised the lovely subtle rendition of 4x5 portrait films. Now trying to go with the flow and accept the comparatively garish effects of a DSLR in jpeg mode, using them for effect. Some of the British surrealists have been an inspiration.

Many great artists return to sweetness and simple beauty late in life. Second childhood is not just a sign of dementia.

Mike C. said...

Struan,

Why not try Fuji X? Wonderful cameras, totally recommended, and nothing garish about the output (unless you choose). You can get my model, the X-E1, for v. little now, and the kit zoom is a very good lens.

Mike

Struan said...

If I did not need to photograph my kids' sports I would have probably swapped to the Fuji a while back. An SLR is still easier to point and aim, and at the time I last had money to buy cameras they had much better autofocus in the badly-hued EV5-6 I end up photographing in. So I'm using a Pentax SLR for now.

I'm actually enjoying learning a new visual language. I love graphic prints and lithographs, so it seems daft not to be able to make use of blotchy colour when it occurs. The trick is to find subjects which are personal without getting gimmicky, or doing that camera club thing with a model in a red dress.

'Scuse the outgoing link, but I've recently been channelling one particular photographer among my online acquaintances:

http://struangray.com/family/The_way_to_work/