Jem Southam: The Red River

Professor Jem Southam is Professor of Photography in the School of Art and Media at Plymouth University.  Born in 1950 he is one of the UK's leading photographers.  Known for his landscape work, he uses large format and specialises in studying a location over a long period of time, looking at the intervention of man with the land.  His observations tend to be topographical. (V&A)

I am particularly interested in his body of work: The Red River.  The red river is near his home in the south-west and he discovered it when out walking his dog.  The work comprises 50 photographs of this small stream from its source up on the moors, through farmland, tin mines and villages and finally out to sea.  He studied the river over a period of 6 years and, initially, his images were of a topographic nature.  However, tiring of this detached approach the work became more varied and intimate.  Southam also uses the work as an allegory for myths that have, over time, influenced man's perception of the land. (Landscape Stories, 1994)

This body of work interests me as Southam has photographed a river from source to sea as I have with the River Witham.  In a similar way that I have used my work as a metaphor for life, he has used his as a metaphor for how we perceive the land.  The work also interests me in a similar way to Alec Sloth's Sleeping by the Mississippi in that he has not felt the need to have the river in all of his images.  Like Soth's work, this inspires me in work following Assignment 2 to make a photographic study of the abbey remains in the Witham Valley.

I was also interested to read in SeeSaw online magazine that, in 1975, Jem Southam walked from Berwick-on-Tweed back to his home in Bristol, inspired by both Laurie Lee and land artist Richard Long. (SeeSaw , 2005)  This psychogeographical touch reminds me of walks made by Will Self, Robert MacFarlane, Patrick Leigh Fermor and Nick Hunt.  I have taken my photographs of the River Witham by cycling along the Water Rail Way and by driving other sections, although I have also walked short sections.  I wonder if I need to actually walk the whole route from source to sea: 132 km or 82 miles.

Landscape Stories (1994) Jem Southam: The Red River [online] Landscape Stories Website. Available from:

http://www.landscapestories.net/issue-12/ls_12-001-jem-southam-the-red-river?lang=en [Accessed 26.10.15]

Schuman, A. (2005) Landscape Stories: an interview with Jem Southam [online] SeeSaw website. Available from: http://seesawmagazine.com/southam_pages/southam_interview.html [Accessed 26.10.15]

 V&A (2015)  Landscape Photography by Jem Southam [online] V&A website. Available from:

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/l/landscape-photography-jem-southam/ [Accessed 26.10.15]