Body of Work Assignment 3: Final Submission

 For this assignment I decided to walk from Lincoln cathedral along the Viking Way long distance footpath to my childhood village of Woodhall spa visiting all of the abbeys on the east bank on the way.  The original idea for this walk was the high concentration of abbeys in the Witham Valley, but I soon realised that the real inspiration was the walk itself.

Why walk apart from the fact that I enjoy walking and have always walked for pleasure since childhood?  Like both Hamish Fulton and Paul Gaffney I have long found walking (and running and cycling) to be a meditative experience, particularly in mountain landscapes.  When walking in mountains, especially when on my own, I have a very strong sensation that I never want to come down.  Walking allows me to slow down and fully experience and appreciate the landscape that I travel through.  It not only provides exercise and improves health, it nourishes the mind, providing spiritual refreshment through contact with nature.  The natural world has always been important to me and during my walk I delighted in my observations: the buzzards wheeling in the air and calling over Kirkstead Abbey and Long Wood, the tiny goldcrest, the UK's smallest bird searching for food, the first coltsfoot in flower and early frogspawn in a small pond and the marsh harrier hunting over the river.  The Viking Way passes around and through several of the Lincolnshire Limewoods, relics of our post-glacial primeval wilderness.  This walk was undertaken at the end of winter when the natural world was just 'waking up' and the woods were quiet, but in a few weeks the colours will lose their subtle browns and bronzes and become a riot of colour and sound from flowers, insects and bird song.  As I approached Woodhall  the more the paths, woods and fields became familiar.  In my childhood I knew where to find every animal, plant and bird's nest.

 Understanding and interpreting the landscape stimulates enjoyment and imagination, the abbeys that I visited being a case in point.  Every landscape represents a story through time, including the layered history of human activity and contact with nature described by Simon Schama in Landscape and Memory.  Walking is very definitely a very special experience and while taking the photographs for this part of my body of work it enabled me to meditate on the memories and myths of past ages that the land and people hold as Simon Schama describes.

The work has been edited into three subsets: Wider landscapes and wider views of paths, Close-ups of paths and, finally,  Intimate Landscapes.  The first set begins

with wider landscapes to set the scene, the first being of the River Witham with Lincoln Cathedral in the background, where it all began.  In this section the images move on to wider views of the paths along which I walked, both helping to set the scene and also to point towards the importance of walking.  The second set concentrates much more on the paths travelled and, hopefully, draws the viewer's attention to them, whether large or small.  The final set features much more intimate landscapes where I examine the land I am passing through in much more detail; I have really slowed down the pace of things here and dwell on the deep experience and appreciation of the minutiae of the landscape.

Set 1

 Set 2

Set 3

Research and Bibliography for Assignment 3

I have researched three photographer artists while researching this part of my body of work: Richard Long, Hamish Fulton and Paul Gaffney and links to the relevant blogs are indicated.  All three base their work on walking. Richard Long began his work by photographing his walks, often the 'footpath' that he had created by walking back and forth along it. Some of my images of actually paths were taken because of that inspiration.  Long has since expanded his work to include sculpture both in the land, which he photographs, and in the studio/gallery and also the use of text.  Unlike Long who alters the landscapes he passes through, Fulton treads softly and leaves no indication of his passing.  Like Long, however, Fulton began with photography, but gradually text has taken over more and more.  His aim was to engage with the land and nature and he feels that walking is a meditative experience.  He says that a walk has a life of its own and does not need to be materialized into an artwork.  He also says that and artwork may be purchased but a walk cannot be sold.  Unlike Richard Long and Hamish Fulton, contemporary photographer Paul Gaffney still relies totally on his photography.  In fact, he chooses not to add text to his images as he feels that it would distract the viewer from the photograph and he argues that lack of caption adds mystery to the pictures.

Liz Wells (2011) reminds us that in the early years of photography, the photographer would travel on foot to reach his desired location, but during the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st car, ownership has become widespread, rail travel is faster and we have cheap air travel.  Travel has become associated with speed of access.  She argues that walking is different, with a slower pace and an increased experience of the environment.  Walking, she points out, is a reflective experience and all of the senses are brought to bear.  She suggests that walking is a whole body experience and integrates the sensual and the cerebral.  Walking is also sequential.

References and Bibliography

Bowditch, T and Rochowski, N. (2016) Paul Gaffney Global Archive Photography Available from: http://globalarchivephotography.com/project/paul-gaffney/  [Accessed 23.2.16]

Deakin, R. (2007) Wildwood, A Journey Through Trees 2nd Edition London Penguin Books Ltd

Gaffney, P. 92016) Paul Gaffney [online] Available from: http://www.paulgaffneyphotography.com/About [Accessed 23.2.16]

MacFarlane, R. (2013) The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot. London. Penguin

Padley, G. (2013) We Make the Path by Walking by Paul Gaffney. British Journal of Photography [online]. Available from: http://www.bjp-online.com/2013/11/we-make-the-path-by-walking-by-paul-gaffney-book-review/ [Accessed 23.2.16]

Parkin, T. (2010) Chris Friel On Landscape [online] Available from: https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2010/12/featured-photographer-chris-friel/ Accessed [10.2.16]

Pavord.A. (2016) Landskipping: Painters, Ploughmen and Places. London. Bloomsbury 

Turner Contemporary (2012) Hamish Fulton: Walk  [online] Available from: https://www.turnercontemporary.org/media/documents/Hamish-Fulton-background-resource.pdf [Accessed 21.02.16]

Schama, S. (1995) Landscape and Memory London, Harper Collins

Shepherd, N. 2011. The Living Mountain London, Canongate Books

Wells, L. (2011) Land Matters: Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity. London, I.B.Tauris