Frederic Gross is a French Professor of Philosophy, or, as Carole Cadwalladr refers to him in her Guardian article of 2014, Frederic Gros: why going for a walk is the best way to free your mind, a philosopher of walking. The Guardian article suggests that his book, A Philosophy of Walking, was a surprise best seller. Cadwalladr meets him for an interview in Paris's Bois de Vincennes, where they have planned a walk. She finds him of a nervous disposition and wondering why his book has attracted such attention. Cadwalladr reminds us that the book is an examination of the philosophy of various thinkers for whom walking was central to their work - Nietzsche, Rimbaud, Kant, Rousseau and Thoreau. Interestingly she points out that none of his subjects are women, but is not sure if that's because women don't walk or don't think!!! (???) The book also discusses Gros's own thoughts on the subject. Cadwalladr feels that it is a passionate affirmation of the simple life, and joy in simple things. She argues that it is beautifully written: clear, simple and precise and the opposite of most academic writing. I would agree with both of these statements; I found it a very enjoyable read and it gave me further interesting insights into walking. Gros says that the philosophy of walking is the philosophy of everyday life. It still looks at the questions of eternity, solitude, time and space, but based on experience. On the basis of very simple, very ordinary things. He argues in the interview that for the philosophers he discusses walking was not just a distraction from their work, it was the condition of their work.
Gros begins his book with the statement that walking is not a sport; there is no result, no time. He argues that walking is the best way to go more slowly than any other method that has been found. This I agree with and from my point of view is very important in order to be able to notice the close detail of nature. Gros tells us that Nietzsche was a remarkable, tireless walker. He says that he walked as others worked and he worked while he was walking. He tells us that Nietzsche argued that We write only with the hand, but we write well 'only with our feet'. This is true from my experience, not writing but thinking things through while out walking. Nietzsche said that if he walked for several days and lives in a landscape, he slowly takes possession of it. This is very reminiscent of Nan Shepherd's philosophy in The Living Mountain. Gros tells us that a an important lesson is that in walking an authentic sign of assurance is slowness and that haste and speed accelerate time which passes more quickly; two hours of hurry shorten a day. He emphasises that one of the secrets of walking is a slow approach to landscapes as it renders them familiar.
Gros tells us that American naturalist, philosopher and writer, Henry David Thoreau observed repeatedly that silence taught him more than the company of others and remarked especially on the silence of woodlands. Jean Jacques Rousseau, Gros says, claimed to be incapable of thinking properly, of composing, creating or finding inspiration except when walking and coined the term Homo Viator - walking man. Rebecca Solnit in Wanderlust also agrees with this point.
At one point Gros talks about humans being 'busy': busy, busy, busy, but always having to do something not to 'be'. To quote a good friend of mine a Human Doing rather than a Human Being. For me it is important in life just to be sometimes and then we can slow down and appreciate the close fine detail of nature. Gros points out that you are doing nothing when you walk, nothing but walking. But having nothing to do but walk makes it possible to recover the pure sensation of 'being'. To marvel at the beauty of the day, the brightness of the sun, the grandeur of the trees, the blue of the sky. To this I would add the intricate close-up detail of nature: the beauty of a lichen covered rock, or a moss encrusted tree trunk, the floor of a wood, the detail of a fern or the beauty of a feather. Gros goes on to say that the body becomes steeped in the earth it treads and thus, gradually, it stops being in the landscape: it becomes the landscape. Gros asks the rhetorical question what profit is gained from walking. He answer that there is none: nothing is produced, no social service is rendered and in that respect walking is thoroughly useless and sterile. Nevertheless the benefit to our lives is immense. When discussing Thoroeau, Gros points out that for Thoreau the American Wilderness is located in the west before him. It is the possibility of the future. For him the wilderness is not the night of European memory, but the morning of the world and humanity and this is where he is coming from in the famous quote 'The west of which I speak is but another name for the wild; and what I have been preparing to say is that in wildness is the preservation of the world.'
Gros discusses the pleasure of walking and says that in walking you find these moments of pure pleasure around encounters. The scent of blackberries or myrtle, the gentle warmth of an early summer sun, the freshness of a stream. Something never known before. In this way walking permits, in bright bursts, the clearance of a path to feeling in discreet quantities: a handful of encounters on the way. He says that joy is experienced in walking, understood as the affect linked to an activity. The same fundamental idea can be found, he says, in Aristotle and Spinoza: joy is the accompaniment to an affirmation. That is why joy, unlike pleasure, increases with repetition and is enriched. He talks about relaxation at the end of a day's walking. Of taking the weight off one's legs, satisfying hunger simply, having a quiet drink and contemplating the declining daylight. I totally empathise with this statement and another joy, for me, especially of winter walking in mountains at the end of a day is the twinkle of lights coming on in the valley and anticipation of relaxation that is to come. There is nothing like that first pint in the pub at the end of a long day. Gros reminds us that Arthur Rimbaud describes this in his poem At the Green Inn ' Blissfully happy, I stuck out my legs under the green table....'
Gros talks of the Urban Flaneur who does experience walking, but in a way far removed from Nietzsche or Thoreau. The Flaneur appeared at a time when the city had acquired enough scale to become a landscape. Baudelaean sauntering a number of descendants, he says: surrealists Louis Aragon and Butte-Chaumont and Andre Breton and later situationist drift theorised by Guy Debord.
Gros goes on to say that Wordsworth is an unavoidable personage in any history of walking, many experts considering him the authentic originator of the long expedition. He was the first - at a time when walking was the lot of the poor, vagabonds and highwaymen - to conceive of the walk as the poetic act, a communion with nature, fulfillment of the body and contemplation of the landscape.
Cadwalladr, C. (2014) Frederic Gros: Why Going for a Walk is the Best Way to Free Your Mind Gaurdian [online] Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/20/frederic-gros-walk-nietzsche-kant [Accessed 27.06.16]
Gros, F. (2014) A Philosophy of Walking, London, Verso
Solnit, R. (2014) Wanderlust: A History of Walking London, Granta
Monday, 27 June 2016
Monday, 20 June 2016
Robert MacFarlane: Landmarks
Landmarks is a book about walking and the land. It is more, however, it is a repository, a collection of words about the land that are becoming less and less used and risk disappearing from our language altogether. Glossary chapters are divided into different aspects of the land (flatlands, uplands, waterlands, coastlands, edgelands etc) and in between each glossary are chapters about these aspects of the land, but more importantly about writers who are passionate about walking and the land. Personalities who fill these chapters include such as Nan Shepherd, John Muir, Roger Deakin, Richard Jeffries and Jaquetta Hawkes. One favourite word in the glossary is the Lincolnshire word for mud and one that I have used all of my life: squad. It has been very pertinent during my walks over these last few months as my boots have often been sprunk with squad!! The glossaries are an absolute treasure trove of words to describe our landscape and this is a determined effort to ensure that they are not lost to us.
In the introduction to the book MacFarlane reminds us that in a recent edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary there had been a culling of words concerning nature. Gone were acorn, adder, ash, beech, bluebell, buttercup, catkin, conker, cowslip, cygnet, dandelion, fern, hazel, heron, ivy, kingfisher, lark, mistletoe, nectar, newt, otter, pasture and willow to be replaced by attachment, block-graph, blog, broadband, bullet-point, celebrity, chatroom, committee, cut-and-paste, MP3 player and voice-mail. For goodness sake conker - gone. I have no doubt that the newly included words are important, but this is the heritage of our young people we are talking about. How can conker not be included!!
I was particularly caught in his writing by how often Robert MacFarland refers to the small close-up details in our landscape and how people find these of the utmost importance. John Muir, for instance for whom 'Every tree calls for special admiration. I have been making many sketches and regret that I cannot draw every needle.' And again he writes 'How typical of Muir to see dazzle, where most would see dullness.' He tells us that we now find it hard to image nature outside a use-ratio framework. He mentions one pro-windfarm local councillor on the island of Lewis who dismisses the island's interior as a 'wilderness' suggesting a space both empty of life and hostile in its asperities.
He discusses Nan Shepherd, author of The Living Mountain about the Cairngorms, who, as a walker practiced a kind of unpious pilgrimage. She tramped around, over, across and into the mountain, rather than charging up it. There is an implicit humility to her repeated acts of traverse, which stands as a corrective to the self-exaltation of the mountaineer's hunger for the utmost point. He tells us that he thought he was familiar with the Cairngorm massif, but Shepherd demonstrated his complacency. He says that her writing taught him to see the familiar hills rather than just look at them. Shepherd argues that the body is made limber by the rhythm of walking. At the same time that Shepherd was writing The Living Mountain French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty was developing his Phenomenology of Perception. MacFarlane argues that Shepherd's philosophical conclusions concerning colour, perception, touch and embodied knowledge are arrestingly similar to those of Merleau-Ponty.
MacFarlane goes on to argue that we are increasingly separated from contact with nature. We have come to forget that our minds are shaped by the bodily experiences of being in the world - its spaces, textures, sounds, smells and habits. He says we are literally losing touch, becoming disembodied, more than in any historical period before ours.
In the chapter on woods MacFarlane quotes Roger Deakin who wrote, 'To enter a wood is to pass into a different world in which we ourselves are transformed. It is where you travel to find yourself, often paradoxically, by getting lost.' I can empathise with this. Three days ago while making photographs for my BOW I walked through Chambers Farm Wood,one of the Lincolnshire Limewoods. A summer wood is much different to the same place in winter. The overriding impression is of green: lush green grass and bright green of new leaves. I walked for four hours in my wood and never trod the same path twice. In order to avoid going to places with which I was familiar I started in the end of the forest I had never walked before and then alternated right and left turns at junctions, however, narrow the paths. I became a Forest Flaneur - and lost myself in both the physical and metaphorical sense. Words I wrote in my notes as I walked include, wet, dripping, mud, puddles, soaking grass, wet boots, green, green grass, green trees, green air, dark, gloom, bird song, flowers, scents, wet, damp, earthy, green, honeysuckle. Some words I could have used from the glossary include after-drop, blashy, briskeno, dibble, down-come, dribs, dringey (light rain that still manages to get you soaking wet - from Lincolnshire), plothering, land-lash, smither, brattlings, daddock, dodder, ellern nubbin and many more.
Macfarlane writes of Richard Jeffries that he came to know Surrey, as he came to know all his landscapes, by walking. He says that like Jeffries, he is an edgelander. When MacFarlane first moved to live in Cambridge he barely recognised the 'bastard countryside' (edgelands) on his doorstep. The edgelands were there to be travelled through and left behind. The notion of developing a relationship with this messed-up terrain didn't occur to him. Disruptive of the picturesque, dismissive of the sublime, this was a landscape that required a literacy he didn't then possess. He suggests that like Nan Shepherd, Jeffries work foresaw the discoveries of phenomenology in the twentieth century concerning intersubjectivity. He notes that Jeffries eye was caught by signs of nature's irrepressibility: the desirable ease and swiftness with which it might return to absorb human structures.
He quotes John Muir who argued that most people are ON this world, but not IN it. Muir also stated that he was in the the woods and the woods were in him. Of Muir, Macfarlane says that his writing about trees amazes him in its commitment to attention and detail. Arboreal study for Muir was a full body experience.
MacFarlane mentions Rebecca Solnit who wrote about the long-term dormancy of the seeds of bristlecone pine, whose wood glows orange and gold, and the oldest specimens of which are nearly 5000 years old - having begun their growth when the pyramids were under construction. They were a favourite subject of wilderness photographer and mountaineer, Galen Rowell.
Chris Packham, naturalist, conservationist and TV presenter is quoted as saying that 'The disconnection from nature is greater now that it has ever been. The children out in the woods, out in the fields, enjoying nature on their own - they are extinct.'
And how terrible is that last statement. If our landscapes, nature and wilderness are to be saved for the future of the planet we need to make sure that this wonderful glossary of words is not also allowed to become extinct.
In the introduction to the book MacFarlane reminds us that in a recent edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary there had been a culling of words concerning nature. Gone were acorn, adder, ash, beech, bluebell, buttercup, catkin, conker, cowslip, cygnet, dandelion, fern, hazel, heron, ivy, kingfisher, lark, mistletoe, nectar, newt, otter, pasture and willow to be replaced by attachment, block-graph, blog, broadband, bullet-point, celebrity, chatroom, committee, cut-and-paste, MP3 player and voice-mail. For goodness sake conker - gone. I have no doubt that the newly included words are important, but this is the heritage of our young people we are talking about. How can conker not be included!!
I was particularly caught in his writing by how often Robert MacFarland refers to the small close-up details in our landscape and how people find these of the utmost importance. John Muir, for instance for whom 'Every tree calls for special admiration. I have been making many sketches and regret that I cannot draw every needle.' And again he writes 'How typical of Muir to see dazzle, where most would see dullness.' He tells us that we now find it hard to image nature outside a use-ratio framework. He mentions one pro-windfarm local councillor on the island of Lewis who dismisses the island's interior as a 'wilderness' suggesting a space both empty of life and hostile in its asperities.
He discusses Nan Shepherd, author of The Living Mountain about the Cairngorms, who, as a walker practiced a kind of unpious pilgrimage. She tramped around, over, across and into the mountain, rather than charging up it. There is an implicit humility to her repeated acts of traverse, which stands as a corrective to the self-exaltation of the mountaineer's hunger for the utmost point. He tells us that he thought he was familiar with the Cairngorm massif, but Shepherd demonstrated his complacency. He says that her writing taught him to see the familiar hills rather than just look at them. Shepherd argues that the body is made limber by the rhythm of walking. At the same time that Shepherd was writing The Living Mountain French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty was developing his Phenomenology of Perception. MacFarlane argues that Shepherd's philosophical conclusions concerning colour, perception, touch and embodied knowledge are arrestingly similar to those of Merleau-Ponty.
MacFarlane goes on to argue that we are increasingly separated from contact with nature. We have come to forget that our minds are shaped by the bodily experiences of being in the world - its spaces, textures, sounds, smells and habits. He says we are literally losing touch, becoming disembodied, more than in any historical period before ours.
In the chapter on woods MacFarlane quotes Roger Deakin who wrote, 'To enter a wood is to pass into a different world in which we ourselves are transformed. It is where you travel to find yourself, often paradoxically, by getting lost.' I can empathise with this. Three days ago while making photographs for my BOW I walked through Chambers Farm Wood,one of the Lincolnshire Limewoods. A summer wood is much different to the same place in winter. The overriding impression is of green: lush green grass and bright green of new leaves. I walked for four hours in my wood and never trod the same path twice. In order to avoid going to places with which I was familiar I started in the end of the forest I had never walked before and then alternated right and left turns at junctions, however, narrow the paths. I became a Forest Flaneur - and lost myself in both the physical and metaphorical sense. Words I wrote in my notes as I walked include, wet, dripping, mud, puddles, soaking grass, wet boots, green, green grass, green trees, green air, dark, gloom, bird song, flowers, scents, wet, damp, earthy, green, honeysuckle. Some words I could have used from the glossary include after-drop, blashy, briskeno, dibble, down-come, dribs, dringey (light rain that still manages to get you soaking wet - from Lincolnshire), plothering, land-lash, smither, brattlings, daddock, dodder, ellern nubbin and many more.
Macfarlane writes of Richard Jeffries that he came to know Surrey, as he came to know all his landscapes, by walking. He says that like Jeffries, he is an edgelander. When MacFarlane first moved to live in Cambridge he barely recognised the 'bastard countryside' (edgelands) on his doorstep. The edgelands were there to be travelled through and left behind. The notion of developing a relationship with this messed-up terrain didn't occur to him. Disruptive of the picturesque, dismissive of the sublime, this was a landscape that required a literacy he didn't then possess. He suggests that like Nan Shepherd, Jeffries work foresaw the discoveries of phenomenology in the twentieth century concerning intersubjectivity. He notes that Jeffries eye was caught by signs of nature's irrepressibility: the desirable ease and swiftness with which it might return to absorb human structures.
He quotes John Muir who argued that most people are ON this world, but not IN it. Muir also stated that he was in the the woods and the woods were in him. Of Muir, Macfarlane says that his writing about trees amazes him in its commitment to attention and detail. Arboreal study for Muir was a full body experience.
MacFarlane mentions Rebecca Solnit who wrote about the long-term dormancy of the seeds of bristlecone pine, whose wood glows orange and gold, and the oldest specimens of which are nearly 5000 years old - having begun their growth when the pyramids were under construction. They were a favourite subject of wilderness photographer and mountaineer, Galen Rowell.
Chris Packham, naturalist, conservationist and TV presenter is quoted as saying that 'The disconnection from nature is greater now that it has ever been. The children out in the woods, out in the fields, enjoying nature on their own - they are extinct.'
And how terrible is that last statement. If our landscapes, nature and wilderness are to be saved for the future of the planet we need to make sure that this wonderful glossary of words is not also allowed to become extinct.
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.
unknown source,
Friday, 17 June 2016
Fay Godwin: Our Forbidden Land
Fay Godwin was a walker, in fact between 1987 and 1990 she was president of the Ramblers' Association. Born in Berlin in 1931, much of her early walking was on the clearly marked paths of the Austrian Alps, but she also came to love the public footpaths in England, especially the fact that she could walk through domestic farming landscapes. Bill Bryson in his latest book The Road to Little Dribbling also makes the same comment. Her walking eventually led her to the idea of working on a photographic walking guide, The Oldest Road: An Exploration of the Ridgeway. She comments in her introductory essay that it was extraordinary that government agencies and others so often try to stop people photographing our heritage. They think, she says that they can censor us as well as try to copyright the landscape. During her research and photography she experienced blocked and vanished footpaths and farmers complete with shotguns and dogs. She argues that whatever one's view of bloodsports, the general public is denied access to large tracts of land so that just a few can enjoy them. She is particularly interested in the fact that virtually no landscape in Britain has not been worked or affected by human use. It was only in later life, she writes, that that she realised the extent of the degradation of the landscape and our food supplies, arguing that the two are inseparable. Apart from her passion for walking, she says, she looks to the countryside to provide the food and untainted water to sustain her bodily needs. She decries the fact that farming is big business driven by its support industries: fertilizer, spray, antibiotics, machinery manufacturers, banks and government. The heavy machinery that is used pulverises the soil and destroys its microlife. Forestry is another business that angers her as it closes off much land from public access and some of our most beautiful land has been obliterated by sterile and monotonous blocks of conifers. Fortunately today there is more enlightenment in the forestry industry than when Godwin published Forbidden Land and even Godwin, herself notes an improvement in their practices. She criticises the fact that the Thatcher Government forced the commission to sell off some of its lands, and when it did so, it did not protect public access. She criticises the Thatcher Government for giving public access to the countryside a very low priority. She feels that traditional ways of life will be destroyed along with wildlife habitats. She finds some small cheer in the introduction of the Farm Woodland Scheme in 1988 which has received more subsidies and encouraged broad-leaved woodlands. She discusses water privatisation which she feels is one of the biggest threats to access to open countryside. She makes the case that military demand for land is insatiable and that they attempted to acquire on the the last great wilderness areas in Scotland, a mountain wilderness called Knoydart (my italics), but it was bought by the newly formed John Muir Trust, whose aim is to conserve and protect wild land for future generations, while respecting the needs and aspirations of those living in such areas. She complains that the military does not feel a responsibility to remove the hideous messes it has made in the landscape. She takes an anti-nuclear stance and comments that the fine wilderness of Dungeness, with its unique shingle bank has been lost along with billions squandered on radioactive waste. I am prompted to wonder what she would have made of the current problems of climate change caused or at least exacerbated, by the burning of fossil fuels. The third largest landowner in Britain is the National Trust for which has parise writing that by and large its record is impressive. Her introduction concludes with a section on environmental organisations and finishes on a more optimistic note.
In a Guardian article from 2011, Margaret Drabble agrees that this is an impassioned attack on the countryside. Her Personal Voice certainly rings out loud and clear. Drabble says that the photographic documentary is eloquent and illustrated with a range of poetry, which I enjoyed and felt makes an illuminating accompaniment to the images and introductory essay.
This book is a bold outcry against the destruction of our landscape, tellingly told through her photography and essay. It thoroughly deserved the first ever Green Book of the Year award.
In a Guardian article from 2011, Margaret Drabble agrees that this is an impassioned attack on the countryside. Her Personal Voice certainly rings out loud and clear. Drabble says that the photographic documentary is eloquent and illustrated with a range of poetry, which I enjoyed and felt makes an illuminating accompaniment to the images and introductory essay.
This book is a bold outcry against the destruction of our landscape, tellingly told through her photography and essay. It thoroughly deserved the first ever Green Book of the Year award.
Reflection, Personal Voice
Having spent the last few weeks on holiday in France (The Auvergne, Cevennes and Vercors) it is now time to get back to work. A recurring theme in my feedbacks is that of 'personal voice' so I was interested, when I returned home, to read the thread on this subject on the student forum led by Clive and Peter and also the article on the same subject on We Are OCA by Clive which followed this up. I have to say I have always struggled with this concept somewhat, but now feel that I have been approaching my work from the wrong direction; the cart before the horse. Having been interested in photography for a long time and also from a science background, I have approached my work from a technique first approach and then try to hang the work on some context. I think the what personal voice means is to forget the technical side of the medium and concentrate on what I want to say first and then go out and take photographs to portray that, using whatever technique is necessary.
I began my level 3 work by trying to hang my body of work on my wildlife photography without thinking first what I wanted to say and being confused when other students and tutors at the Barnsley study weekend told me the work was too scientific and technical and not suitable for an arts degree. My tutor had also warned me that students who concentrated on technical skills failed to do well on a degree course. I thought that by trying to imitate Elliot Porter would be good enough, but I had given no thoughts to what I actually wanted to say.
My tutor suggested in his feedback for BOW Assignment 3 that he was 'especially interested in the very personal response that you've touched on a few times, rather than a kind of historical or geographical survey.' Earlier he had commented, 'Might a part of this deep and personal experience in the mountains also inform your current landscape work closer to home? Perhaps it already does. Personal voice, which is what Level 3 is all about, is the part that is made without reference to other photographers, styles, authors and contexts and lies at the heart of the work. The difficulty is in finding it.' I think that with the help of my tutor and fellow students in our 'hangout group' at the end of Assignment 2 and in Assignment 3, I have begun to find it. During one 'hangout' when my colleagues were commenting, on the first draft of my work for Assignment 3 in which I was photographing a walk along the Viking Way long distance footpath, one asked the question 'Why walk?' This confused and embarrassed me at the time as I couldn't think of an answer, but it turned out to be a 'light bulb' moment. On reflection, I realised that is what I had always done, as a child and teenager roaming the woods looking for wildlife and birds' nests and 'exploring', then, later in my adult life to the present time I have walked, perhaps, thousands of miles in Lincolnshire and in mountainous areas of this country and the Alps and Pyrenees. These walks were often just for their own sake, but also as a means of watching and later photographing the nature and landscapes that I love so much.
My second 'light bulb moment' came more like slowly turning on a dimmer switch while I was away walking and orchid hunting in France. During these walks I spent a great deal of time reflecting on my work and on my reading and realised that what I cared passionately about was the natural world and land around me and discovering it through walking and slowly at that. As the French philosopher Frederic Gros says in A Philosophy of Walking 'It is one of the secrets of walking: a slow approach to landscapes that gradually renders them familiar.' I also realised that, as much as I enjoyed photographing plants, insects and birds, what has always inspired me is the close up intimate landscapes, not of anything momentous, but the intricate detail and beauty of a lichen covered rock, or a moss encrusted tree stump, the convoluted patterns of tree trunks, the floor of a wood, the detail of a fern or the beauty of a feather. When I thought about it I had always photographed these things, but as a side issue and never shown them.
Whist in France, towards then end of a day walking in the Combau Valley, high in the Vercors Mountains, I lay back on the grass to rest surrounded by flower strewn alpine meadow. I was fascinated and mesmerised by the changing patterns in the clouds above me; two layers, one blown in one direction high up in the jet stream and another only just above blown in the opposite direction by the ambient wind. Like Nan Shepherd in The Lonely Mountain, I felt one with the land, body becoming part of the earth whilst mind floated with the clouds above. As Gros says when walking 'The body becomes steeped in the earth it treads and thus, gradually, it stops being in the landscape it BECOMES the landscape.' There are times when walking and closely observing the land and nature that I never want to come to an end. These moments are transcendental, spiritual times during which I find it easy to believe in a creator god. Despite being of a science background with a firm belief in evolution I can reconcile these two concepts in my mind: evolution being brought about by a creator.
I now think I know where I am coming from, the next step is to capture that through my photography. For Assignemt 3 I walked the Viking Way from Lincoln to Woodhall, my childhood village. The original idea had been to visit all of the Witham Valley Abbeys on the way, but in the end the walk itself became the main thrust. Part of the walk went through the Lincolnshire Limewoods, relics of the original primeval forest in post glacial Lincolnshire. For Assignment 4 I plan to walk the myriad paths through these woods, but now I think I know what I am looking for.
Thanks to my fellow students and tutors, I may be finding my way.
I began my level 3 work by trying to hang my body of work on my wildlife photography without thinking first what I wanted to say and being confused when other students and tutors at the Barnsley study weekend told me the work was too scientific and technical and not suitable for an arts degree. My tutor had also warned me that students who concentrated on technical skills failed to do well on a degree course. I thought that by trying to imitate Elliot Porter would be good enough, but I had given no thoughts to what I actually wanted to say.
My tutor suggested in his feedback for BOW Assignment 3 that he was 'especially interested in the very personal response that you've touched on a few times, rather than a kind of historical or geographical survey.' Earlier he had commented, 'Might a part of this deep and personal experience in the mountains also inform your current landscape work closer to home? Perhaps it already does. Personal voice, which is what Level 3 is all about, is the part that is made without reference to other photographers, styles, authors and contexts and lies at the heart of the work. The difficulty is in finding it.' I think that with the help of my tutor and fellow students in our 'hangout group' at the end of Assignment 2 and in Assignment 3, I have begun to find it. During one 'hangout' when my colleagues were commenting, on the first draft of my work for Assignment 3 in which I was photographing a walk along the Viking Way long distance footpath, one asked the question 'Why walk?' This confused and embarrassed me at the time as I couldn't think of an answer, but it turned out to be a 'light bulb' moment. On reflection, I realised that is what I had always done, as a child and teenager roaming the woods looking for wildlife and birds' nests and 'exploring', then, later in my adult life to the present time I have walked, perhaps, thousands of miles in Lincolnshire and in mountainous areas of this country and the Alps and Pyrenees. These walks were often just for their own sake, but also as a means of watching and later photographing the nature and landscapes that I love so much.
My second 'light bulb moment' came more like slowly turning on a dimmer switch while I was away walking and orchid hunting in France. During these walks I spent a great deal of time reflecting on my work and on my reading and realised that what I cared passionately about was the natural world and land around me and discovering it through walking and slowly at that. As the French philosopher Frederic Gros says in A Philosophy of Walking 'It is one of the secrets of walking: a slow approach to landscapes that gradually renders them familiar.' I also realised that, as much as I enjoyed photographing plants, insects and birds, what has always inspired me is the close up intimate landscapes, not of anything momentous, but the intricate detail and beauty of a lichen covered rock, or a moss encrusted tree stump, the convoluted patterns of tree trunks, the floor of a wood, the detail of a fern or the beauty of a feather. When I thought about it I had always photographed these things, but as a side issue and never shown them.
Whist in France, towards then end of a day walking in the Combau Valley, high in the Vercors Mountains, I lay back on the grass to rest surrounded by flower strewn alpine meadow. I was fascinated and mesmerised by the changing patterns in the clouds above me; two layers, one blown in one direction high up in the jet stream and another only just above blown in the opposite direction by the ambient wind. Like Nan Shepherd in The Lonely Mountain, I felt one with the land, body becoming part of the earth whilst mind floated with the clouds above. As Gros says when walking 'The body becomes steeped in the earth it treads and thus, gradually, it stops being in the landscape it BECOMES the landscape.' There are times when walking and closely observing the land and nature that I never want to come to an end. These moments are transcendental, spiritual times during which I find it easy to believe in a creator god. Despite being of a science background with a firm belief in evolution I can reconcile these two concepts in my mind: evolution being brought about by a creator.
I now think I know where I am coming from, the next step is to capture that through my photography. For Assignemt 3 I walked the Viking Way from Lincoln to Woodhall, my childhood village. The original idea had been to visit all of the Witham Valley Abbeys on the way, but in the end the walk itself became the main thrust. Part of the walk went through the Lincolnshire Limewoods, relics of the original primeval forest in post glacial Lincolnshire. For Assignment 4 I plan to walk the myriad paths through these woods, but now I think I know what I am looking for.
Thanks to my fellow students and tutors, I may be finding my way.
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