L’Oeil de la Photographie is pleased to link up with a new educational resource britishphotography.org to provide an A to Z of British Photography based on photographs in the Hyman Collection. Every two weeks we will present the next letter of the alphabet.
Just launched britishphotography.org gives online access to Claire and James Hyman’s personal collection of British photography as well as providing essays on the subject and links to other websites.
Established over a period of nearly twenty years, the Hyman Collection consists of over 3,000 artworks with an emphasis on photography from nineteenth century salt prints to contemporary works. The Hyman Collection seeks to support British Photography through education and acquisitions and to use britishphotography.org as a forum for promoting British Photography.
Today C is for Countryside
The Hyman Collection includes many works which address the countryside including both landscapes and depictions of village life.
The countryside is explored for both its historical, national resonance and as a site of continual, ongoing change. The beautiful landscapes of Edwin Smith and of Fay Godwin draw from English Romanticism and a pastoral tradition that goes back to the days of William Wordsworth and suggest that little has changed. Meanwhile, Paul Reas, responds more subversively to such history with his playful images of heritage tourism in his great series Flogging a Dead Horse.
John Blakemore and Thomas Cooper’s metaphoric treatment of nature, meanwhile, suggests a place of beauty but of mystery too. Elsewhere traces of man are the key. In the work of Ian Berry the shepherds and their dogs suggest an intimate bond between man and nature, whereas in Paul Hill’s photographs the inclusion of people often adds a surreal aspect that can suggest a lack of harmony between people and place.
The incursion of man in subtle and sinister ways also runs through many photographs. Taking different paths, John Davies and Colin Jones, present the countryside as a scarred, industrial place and Jem Southam Painter’s Pool photographs show it as a site for more gentle man-made interventions.
Meanwhile, Anna Fox’s Country Girls, Jo Spence’s Remodelling Photohistory and Paul Seawright’s Sectarian Murders suggest that the countryside is a disturbing place.
