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.
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