Landscape Course - The Four Seasons

In discussion with my tutor about the 'Four Seasons' exercise (Project 15), it was agreed that I could undertake an urban landscape project with the challenge of producing one photograph per season at a chosen inner-city location which would show sufficient seasonal variation.

I decided to choose the canal side location  near the International Convention Centre/Symphony Hall in the centre of Birmingham, which is called 'Waters Edge'. This is close to where I live so access was no problem.

For all four shots I chose a low position on the canal side and shot diagonally across the canal to include most of the footbridge connecting the ICC with Brindley Place, a view of the canal under the distant (Broad St) road bridge towards The Mailbox, the 'cafeteria canal boat 'George' and the converted canal-side warehouse that is now the Pitcher and Piano' pub.

Summer

The flowers across the bridge and on the upper right - together with the clouds! - show that this is a summer shot and it was taken in early July using my Tokina wide angle lens. f/13 with a shutter speed of 1/250 seconds at 11mm. ISO 400. Tripod.

Autumn

This shot was taken on a typically misty autumn evening at dusk as people make their way home. I like the reflections of the orange lights in the canal. For this shot I used my Canon 50mm f 1.8 prime lens, f/4.5 and shutter speed of 1/50 secs. ISO 400. 

Winter

We have had two consecutive very severe winters when the canals have been frozen for weeks. This January shot shows large chunks of ice broken off by the passage of boats along the canal. Tokina wide-angle lens, f/8.0 and shutter speed of 1/4 secs at 11mm. ISO 400. Tripod.

Spring

Taken early morning on 1st May on a bright sunny day making strong reflections on the water. Plenty of new leaves on the tree on the left and there is even some left-over Royal Wedding bunting on the canal boat on the right! Tokina wide angle lens, f/16 at shutter speed of 1/50 at 11mm. ISO 100. Tripod.

Conclusion

I think that I have demonstrated in this series of photographs that it is possible to show seasonal variations within an urban landscape, if it is chosen carefully.

Landscape Course Portfolio

 I decided to take my Portfolio shots at Nymans Gardens in East Sussex for mainly practical reasons. When I started the Landscape course (April 2010), I was living in Spain but I knew that we would be re-locating to the UK later in the year. Therefore, I needed a location in the UK but one that I could visit when we made trips from Spain to see family. As we have grandchildren in Brighton, it made sense to choose somewhere accessible to there, hence Nymans.

The first three photographs, chosen from those taken for Assignment 1, represent Spring. The first shows the typical blossom at that time of year. I used a Canon 50mm lens at f/1.8 to obtain a shallow depth of field.

The second shot has been adjusted slightly to take account of my tutors comments about positioning the bridge higher in the frame.This shot was taken using a Tamron zoom lens at 100mm at f/22 with exposure time of 2.5 seconds (using a tripod, of course).

The third shot is again adjusted from the original and has been cropped to give more emphasis to the daffodils and to place them on a 'third'. Tamron lens again, f/9, shutter speed of 1/15 sec at 65mm.

The first of the summer shots is looking towards the house and a family picnicking. Taken with the Tamron zoom lens at f/22 and a shutter speed of 1/6 secs @ 154mm.

I produced a shot similar to this second Summer shot for Assignment 1, but my tutor felt that the path was too central and it needed to be taken lower down and nearer to the tree. I have tried to follow that advice here with this wide-angle shot taken at f/16 with a shutter speed of 1/55 seconds @16mm.

The final summer shot was again taken low down but with the zoom lens at f/22 and shutter speed of 1/13 seconds @59mm.

The autumn shots were taken on an overcast day and highlight some of the vivid colours seen at this season of the year. The first shot, though, was taken from ground level looking through fallen leaves. Tamron lens 18 - 270mm, f/16, shutter speed 1/8 at 21mm, ISO 100.

The second autumn shot has both wonderful golden leaves on the tree on the left but a very brooding sky. Tamron 18 - 270mm lens, ISO 100, f/16, shutter speed 1/30 secs at 42mm.

The third shot shows a number of different trees, all showing their various autumn colours. Tamron 18 - 270mm, f/16, shutter speed 1/20 secs at 91mm, ISO 100.

I had been hoping to get some snow covered landscapes for the winter photographs to really distinguish the seasons but, unfortunately, this wasn't possible for this portfolio. The first early winter (November) photograph gives some hints of the season with the colour of the leaves but it could almost be an autumn shot. Tamron 18 - 270mm lens, f/10, shutter speed of 1/40 secs at 35mm and ISO 400 (without tripod).

Similarly with the second shot but this has more of a winter feel with the almost bare branches. Tamron 18 - 270mm lens, f/11, shutter speed of 1/13 secs at 59mm and ISO 400 (hand-held).



The final shot is taken deeper into the season (early February) and is unmistakeably winter with the naked branches standing out in the sunshine. Tamron 18 - 270mm lens, f/11, shutter speed 1/400 secs at 154mm and ISO 400 (handheld).

Conclusion

In conclusion, I think that I created a difficulty for myself with the location chosen for the portfolio exercise as there wasn't enough variety in landscape available within Nymans. I felt this particularly in trying to produce something distinctive for the winter, and to some extent the autumn, photographs. If I were to do the exercise again, and as I have now returned to live in the UK, I would have chosen somewhere like the Peak District with its more dramatic landscape and seasonal variations and  I would have included more 'distance' shots, as well.





Landscape Assignment 5 - post tutor comments

As I said in the introduction to this final assignment,  I found this the most difficult to date and the comments from my tutor bear out my struggles. I would have liked to have spent  time in more remote locations and at times when the light was particularly dramatic but this did not prove to be possible. I found the comments, as always, constructive and pertinent.

As pointed out by my tutor, many of the photographs submitted for the assignment would have been better with more shadow or lower camera angle. Some would have been enhanced with tighter cropping.

I have made some adjustments to several of the photographs to try and reflect the points made in the tutor report.


Photograph 6

This was considered to have too much empty space in the foreground and I have cropped the shot to bring more emphasis to the stumps.

Photograph 4

If I were to take this shot again, I would use a wide-angle lens as suggested but I have attempted to improve the image by converting it to a square format to make the gravestone a stronger part of the frame and I have 'lost' the left hand object referred to by my tutor by using the 'Patch' tool in Photoshop.

Photograph 7

Here I have increased the contrast and removed some of the distracting branches on the left hand side.

Photograph 10

Following my tutors advice, I have increased the contrast and created a gap betweeen the top of the cross and the overhanging branch. I think this is much better but perhaps there should be a gap between the tree trunk and the right-hand branch. Or is this being over sensitive?

All the above shots are somewhat better as a result of the adjustments but none even approach the quality of those produced by Fay Godwin!

The next step

I am currently putting together the assessment pack for the Level 2 Landscape course which will be assessed in July. The course has been very instructive although a little complicated in that I have had two bases for its duration - one in Spain and one in the UK. Fortunately, my tutor has been very accommodating in letting me produce my assignments electronically, via this blog.

The big decision recently has been 'what to do next'. I certainly want to continue the OCA route to a BA in Photography as it gives me something tangible to aim for so the choice has been whether to tackle another Level 2 course or to start one or two Level 1 courses to complement 'The Art of Photography' which I finished in 2010. It seemed to me that it was important to complete the Level 1 courses as soon as possible and, as the remaining two - 'People and Place' and 'Digital Photographic Practice'  appear very different - it should be possible to study them concurrently.

Having taken advice at the OCA stand at Focus on Imaging this week and raising the question with fellow students via the OCA on-line forum, I feel confident that I can successfully study these two courses at the same time. Therefore, I have now enrolled for both and intend to start  at the beginning of April, having now received the course documentation.

Although I am retired and, in theory at least, have plenty of spare time, I will need to plan the course work carefully to put in the required number of hours. Also, I need to consider whether to start another blog or to use this one for both. What I do know is that it is going to be an interesting year ahead!

Assignment 5: In the style of an influential photographer

I have probably said this before but this has been the most difficult assignment to date as I found it very difficult not only to distil, in my own mind, the particular style of Fay Godwin, my chosen photographer, but to then go and take 12 photographs to illustrate this.

First of all, it is important to decide what we (I) mean by style. The course material, in the introduction to Section 5, "Styles and Themes", makes two interesting observations about the 'style' of  Fay Godwin's work. With respect to the choice of subject, this is described as "quiet, unspectacular English scenes" and the format of her photographs is described as "both medium and 35mm" depending upon the subject. Ignoring the fact that much of her landscape work was carried out outside England - in Scotland and Wales, for example - there are clearly other ways of describing her style of photography.

In an attempt to further define Fay Godwin's style, I have borrowed some definitions of style from art history, set out by Heinrich Wolfflin in his book "Principles of Art History" as they have some relevance here. His three principal parameters of style are

Linear v Painterly - the extent to which a painting (or photograph, for our purposes) contains sharp outlines and elements which stand alone as opposed to having shapes melding together (almost towards impressionism)

Plane v Recession - the extent to which images appear to be set in one or more horizontal planes rather than having the eye being drawn into the picture.

Closed v Open - where the overall composition seems to point inwards in a self contained way (closed) giving the impression that the image itself is the most important thing rather than being drawn outwards (open)to hint that it is part of a (more important?) larger whole.

In looking at Faye Godwin's work in the light of this model, I would suggest that, more often than not, her photographs are linear, plane and closed. There are many photographs of monuments, isolated buildings, particular subjects (e.g. restriction notices to illustrate her 'forbidden land' series) for instance.

In choosing photographs for this asignment, I have tried to illustrate this analysis, although local availability of the type of landscapes photographed by Fay Godwin and the more open access to the countryside these days (although this may change under the currrent Government(!) have eliminated some of the subjects she chose herself. I was always mindful of the framing of shots so that some I have presented in a square format and most in black and white, to reflect the way she produced most of her landscapes.

f/11 at 59mm, 1/125, ISOI 400, Tamron 18 - 270mm lens

f/11 at 59mm, 1/250, ISO 400, Tripod, Tamron 18 - 270mm lens

f/11 at 35mm, 1/20, ISO 400, Tamron 18 - 270mm lens

f/8.0 at 50mm, 1/80, ISO 400, Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens

f/14 at 46mm, 1/400, ISO 400, Tamron 18 - 270mm lens

f/14 @ 65mm, 1/100, ISO 400, Tamron 18 - 270mm lens

f/11 @ 18mm, 1/1000, ISO 400, Tripod, Tamron 18 - 270mm lens

f/22 @ 119mm, 1/6 secs, ISO 100, tripod, Tamron 18 - 270mm lens

f/11 @ 18mm, 1/40 secs, ISO 100, Tripod, Tamron 18 - 270mm lens

f/8.0 @ 50mm, 1/500, ISO 400, Canon EF f/1.8 II lens

f/11 @ 100mm, 1/4 secs, ISO 100, Tripod, Canon 100mm f/2.8L Macro

f/8 @ 218mm, 1/250 secs, ISO 400, Tamron 18 - 270mm lens

The  final two colour photographs are my attempt to reflect some of her later work with colour in the Glassworks and Secret Lives series.

The Mexican Suitcase and a puzzle resolved

"The Mexican Suitcase" is the title of an exhibition of rediscovered Spanish Civil War negatives by Robert Capa, David Seymour (Chim) and Gerda Taro. It is being shown until 9th January at the International Center of Photography in New York and I was fortunate enough to visit it in December. The title of the exhibition refers to the recent (2007) discovery in Mexico of three small cardboard boxes of negatives which had disappeared out of Capa's Paris studio at the beginning of WW2 and presumed lost, although there were always rumours of their survival.


Many of the images of the above three photographers are very recognisable as they appeared in foreign news magazines during the Spanish Civil War and were reproduced subsequently for other publications. To provide context with these images, the exhibition displayed copies of the original magazines.


The negatives provide an amazing record of the years of the Spanish Civil War, both of the fighting and of the affects on the ordinary people of Spain as they struggled with their everyday lives. The most fascinating aspect of the find has been the possibility of adding context to the published photographs by being able to trace, through the strips of negatives, what happened before and after the published image. It was also apparent how many images were taken to produce those iconic photographs.

I wrote in February last year about what I called the David Seymour 'puzzle' relating to his famous photograph titled 'A Public Meeting in Estremadura, just prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, Spain. 1936' but sometimes, confusingly, called 'Air Raid Over Barcelona,1938' (see the standard text 'Photography. A Concise History.' by Ian Jeffrey page 189). The original negative was on one of the strips discovered in Mexico and clearly demonstrates that it had nothing to do with an air raid, or Barcelona.

An explanation for the mistaken identity was suggested by the exhibition curator as follows. The photograph was first published on May 14th 1936 in 'Regards', the magazine of the French Communist Party and reproduced in the magazine 'Madrid' in 1937 with a montage of airplanes flying over the woman, so was mis-captioned as being during an air raid. The negative being lost, later reproductions were made from copy prints which not only cropped the original composition but darkened the tones, reinforcing the erroneous identification. This seems quite convincing to me as the image shown in books like 'Photography. A Concise History' (referred to above) is much more tightly cropped than the original negative which shows a large crowd of peasants in a village square rather than several anxious-looking faces.

All in all, this was an excellent exhibition, both from a photographic and historical perspective and I hope that it comes to the UK sometime soon. I wanted to buy the exhibition catalogue but was somewhat dismayed by the US $98 price tag. Still, I have a few postcards to remind me!

Landscape Assignment 4 - Fay Godwin (includes comments on tutor report)

I regret to say that, before embarking on the OCA Landscape course, I hadn’t heard of Fay Godwin. Having reviewed the work of the five suggested photographers, I was really impressed by the brooding landscapes of Fay Godwin and the more I have looked at her work and read about her approach to photography, I am very glad that I chose her for this assignment.




There is no doubt in my mind that Fay Godwin is one of the best landscape photographers that this country has produced. Although born in Berlin, Germany in 1931(her father was a British diplomat and her mother an American artist) and then spending her early years at various schools throughout the world, she lived most of her adult life in the UK, settling in London in 1958, at the age of 27. She died in 2005 at the age of 74.


Fay Godwin became interested in photography relatively late in life, her interest being stirred by taking family snap-shots. As she said, her then husband was unable to get to grips with the technicalities of the camera so she was the one who took charge. She had no formal training and she found it very difficult to learn about the art of photography because of the lack of courses and photographic exhibitions at that time. However, when her marriage broke up in 1970, she decided to try and make a living out of photography, perhaps in response to her husband suggesting that she should earn money by becoming a secretary! She had already done some portraits of some well known writers, all taken in natural light, for use on the dust jackets of books and she put together a leaflet showing some of these which she sent to everyone that she could think of, with some success, obviously.


Although Fay Godwin is thought of mainly as a landscape photographer, it is worth saying here that the portraits referred to above were of a very high standard. Photographing her subjects in their own homes and without that use of flash she produced some very striking shots, all in black and white, like this shot of Ted Hughes in 1971.

In the mid 1970’s, her ex-husband died and she was diagnosed with cancer. Her ex-husband's estate would take many years to sort out and she needed money to support her two sons. She said that she had been approached separately by the writer John Fowles and poet Ted Hughes about collaborating with her on a book and she decided to try and put together the photographs for both books in the same year as, she said, she needed the money (South Bank Show – November 1986).


Immediately prior to this, she had been working inside factories, taking photographs of some of the appalling conditions in which people had to work but she decided that, with her illness, she wanted to get out into the open air, thus starting the phase of her career for which she is most renowned. Ted Hughes suggested the Calder Valley, close to his birthplace, where there were lots of old, disused mills, most not there anymore. According to photo historian and friend Roger Taylor, the northern landscape was a revelation to Fay having lived her UK life up until then in the Home Counties. As she said later in her introductory essay to the book ‘Our Forbidden Land’:

That was the real beginning of my getting to know this country, where I felt a foreigner. (Godwin, 1990, P11 )

The Godwin/Hughes collaboration resulted in the book ‘Remains of Elmet: a Pennine Sequence’, published in 1979, which was re-printed several times, finally as ‘Elmet’ in 1994 with additional poems and photographs. Fay Godwin said years later that this 1994 edition was the work for which she would like to be remembered.


Her collaboration with John Fowles, referred to above, probably resulted in the book ‘Islands’, published in 1978 but her major work with him was for the book ‘Land’ in 1985. In a very interesting essay that introduces the book, Fowles talks about the influences that shaped Fay Godwin’s approach to photography. He quotes part of a 1983 interview which she gave:

I don’t have an academic approach to photographs, and I’m not very interested in theory. I’m much more interested in working. The old question about whether photography is an art is a silly question. I’ve been called a Romantic photographer and I hate it. It sounds slushy and my work is not slushy. I’m a documentary photographer, my work is about reality, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be creative.(Godwin, 1983).

Most of the landscape work she produced was in black and white and, during a video shown at the 2010 retrospective exhibition ‘Land Revisited’ at the National Media Museum in Bradford, she commented that this suited her mood very well around the time she was working on the ‘Remains of Elmet’ in the mid 1970s. That she continued with this approach in later years during happier times, is perhaps an indication of the considerable success she achieved in producing such striking images without the use of colour, although the dark tones and high contrast of the early landscape years were much reduced.


In viewing the photographs for ‘Land’ at the retrospective exhibition, I had the strong feeling that the use of colour (film) would have been counter-productive as the mood and composition of the images were much enhanced by being captured in black and white. Also, and unusually for landscapes, much of her output was in square format. She was a perfectionist with respect to the film and print paper chosen for her photographs and in deciding on their sequence in her various books, according to Roger Taylor with whom she collaborated.


When the National Media Museum acquired the complete set of vintage exhibition prints from ‘Land’ in 1994, which formed the basis of the 2010 exhibition ‘Land Revisited’ exhibition, Fay Godwin wrote an article titled ‘How Land Came About’. This article was made available on-line as part of the Museum publicity for the retrospective. In reading this article, it is clear how focussed Fay Godwin was in completing her many landscape projects and in producing work of the highest quality, often in unpleasant conditions. She did this despite a number of ‘disasters’ (her word) caused by having to discard many images (from 150 rolls of film) because of faulty negative material (she later obtained financial compensation from both Ilford and Agfa).


As was her usual practice, she spent a lot of time arranging the final prints for the book so that it had “it’s own logic and sequence”. It was finally published in 1985 and was sold out before its publication. In the same year, an exhibition of the photographs opened at the Serpentine Gallery in London. By 1994, the time of the article quoted above, the book was in its fifth printing and had sold 25,000 copies.


In November 1986, Fay Godwin became the first photographer to be the subject of The South Bank Show. This, she said, was despite the reluctance of Melvyn Bragg:

who had been extremely nervous about showing photography, and sought to ‘legitimise’ it by comparing it with painting”, particularly that of Victorian watercolour painters. (Godwin, 1994)

It is worth considering here whether Melvyn Bragg was justified in his approach. Authors of work are not always best placed to judge how their work will be seen and, even though Fay Godwin certainly did not see herself as producing work comparable to romantic landscape or Victorian watercolour painters, there are certainly marked similarities in that both these painters and herself were portraying man’s interaction with, and influence on, the landscape.


Part of the programme showed Fay Godwin ‘on location’ taking photographs and walking in remote areas with her camera equipment and rather large tripod. Her enthusiasm, patience, attention to detail and understanding of light were quite apparent. (Video accompanying the ‘Land Revisited’ exhibition, 2010)




Perhaps it was because she wasn’t born in the UK that gave Fay Godwin, almost like a convert, her love of the British landscape and her passion to use her work to bring attention to the threats facing it. Despite having much of the cartilage in one of her knees removed when she was 40, following a skiing accident some years earlier, she was an extremely keen walker and, therefore, saw and experienced these threats at firsthand. She was strongly influenced by Wainwrights Guides to the Lake District and joined the Ramblers Association in the mid 1950’s, eventually becoming its President from 1987 to 1990. It was in 1990 that she published her most political work, ‘Our Forbidden Land’, which comprised an essay by her and a collection of black and white photographs drawing attention to a number of issues which amounted to a campaign against the detrimental way the countryside was being managed:

I felt my own best contribution as President would be a book, and decided at the time to work on ‘Our Forbidden Land’. (Godwin, 1990, P27 )

In her introductory essay, she gave many examples from her own experience of restrictions which had been placed upon her as a photographer and walker. For example, she had been subject on numerous occasions to “red-tape interrogations” whilst photographing the pre-historic stones at Avebury, often when the light was at its best for photography. Also, she encountered access problems whilst working on her book ‘The Drovers Roads of Wales’.


The issues highlighted in the book included:


• The right to roam. She advocated government legislation to create access on foot to the 87% of land then in private ownership, the largest being the Forestry Commission, MoD and the National Trust.



• Removal of hedges at the rate of “one mile per daylight hour in the first half of the 1980s”.

 • Extensive use of pesticides by farmers, causing potential risks to humans and animals. She also pointed out the problems caused by the spray drift of chemicals used by farmers.

• Organic farming. She became a strong supporter of organic farming during her fight against cancer when she was advised to eat as much fresh organically-grown food as possible.

• The presence of bulls and dogs where there were public rights of way.

• Extensive conifer planting by the Forestry Commission, then the country’s biggest landowner.



• Military Exclusion Areas like Greenham Common.



• Access to monuments like Stonehenge which at the time was not open to the public.

• Nuclear power




The photographs in the book leave little to the imagination in respect of the author’s intention but each has an accompanying text to reinforce the message. As Fay Godwin said:

normally I am happy to let people interpret my pictures in their own way, but I decided that for this book the ambiguities should be clarified”.........”It has become my personal exploration of the environment now.(Godwin,1985, P27 )

While some of the photographs are straight-forward shots of warning signs or restrictions, there are some excellent ‘photo-journalism’ photographs showing various scars on the landscape caused by human intervention like ‘Pont Scethin area being prepared for water privatisation’ (P 113)

as well as wonderful natural landscape photographs like 'Choinnich, Cuillin Hills, Skye' (P149).

For those who had labelled Fay Godwin as a ‘romantic’ photographer, this set of photographs must have given them the shock that the photographer possibly intended and reinforced her view that she was first, and foremost, a documentary photographer. Photo historian Roger Taylor thought that the most accurate term to describe Fay Godwin’s work would be as a ‘topographer’, a term used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to describe:

someone who specifically went into the landscape to report back by means of sketches, charts, and written accounts of what they had encountered. Topographers were travellers with attitude, curious to understand everything they beheld (Taylor, 2001, P17)

Certainly the phrase ‘travellers with attitude’ seems very apt in the case of Fay Godwin.


Although best known for her black and white landscapes, Fay Godwin’s relationship with colour photography began around 1979/80 when she was given a Polaroid camera. In 1986/87, she received a Fellowship at the National Museum of Photography (now the National Media Museum) in Bradford and set out to explore the city and its surroundings using colour:

After Land I wanted to continue exploring the theme but I needed a new challenge so turned to colour. I explored Bradford and produced a series of urban landscapes that I liked, but because Land had made such an impact on the general public my colour work wasn’t reviewed. Maybe black and white is the best medium for landscapes, I don’t know. I’m not faithful to one particular medium, and it’s what I try to teach people who work with me. (Godwin, 2004 final interview)

Certainly, for me, this collection of photographs doesn’t have the overall impact of her black and white landscape work, perhaps because there is less subtlety and a lack of a mysterious quality that was evident in ‘Land’. However, there are some photographs that are really enhanced by the use of colour, like ‘Sunset, Baildon bridge, Shipley, 1987’

and 'Telephone kiosks for sale, Shipley, 1987'.

Her third collection of photographs in the ‘Land’, ‘Our Forbidden Land’ trilogy was ‘The Edge of the Land’ which examined the coastal regions of the UK and published in 1995. Her introduction contained a highly critical view of the National Trust, whose attitude to photography she “deplored”.


Her final major body of work, titled ‘Glassworks and Secret Lives’, published in 1999, was another significant departure from her black and white landscapes, not only by the use of colour but by being of a much more intimate and detailed nature. The subject matter comprised glass, netting and plastic waste, leaves and flowers, all taken close-up with a rather soft focus which resulted in very abstract images.


Her last major retrospective was an exhibition at The Barbican in 2001 and a book, ‘Landmarks’ was published in 2002.


In her final interview, with David Corfield of Practical Photography, given in 2004, the year before her death, when she was ill with heart problems, Fay Godwin explained that, even at 73 years of age, she had embraced a new way of working to make up for the fact that she was unable to get out and about as she would have liked:

I had been working in colour for ten years or so and looked at digital and liked the possibilities it gave me. So I went out and bought this little 5-MegaPixel camera that I like because I don’t have to carry any heavy bags around.

I’ve sold all my darkroom stuff, which was quite a wrench seeing it’s been part of my life for the best part of thirty years, and now I print pictures in Photoshop. It’s impressed me.(Godwin, 2004 final interview)

Fay Godwin died on 27th May 2005. She had a highly successful career as a documentary photographer and the campaigning nature of her work, particularly with ‘Our Forbidden Land’, contributed enormously to raising awareness about environmental issues and ‘the right to roam’. Her success can be shown, among other things, by the facts that restrictions on pesticides have now been introduced, Stonehenge is accessible once again, Greenham Common is now largely restored to its natural state and the Countryside and Rights of Way Act, 2000, gave walkers the right to roam over one million hectares of open countryside in England and Wales.


Fay Godwin was, truly, a photographer with attitude.

Comments on Tutor Report Form

My tutor considered this "a good essay" although he had some issues of a presentational nature regarding the need to be more specific about my source material.  I shall add a bibliography below.

There were a few points where I hadn't been entirely clear.

1. I had stated that Faye Godwin had already done some portraits of some well-known writers before becoming a landscape photographer although I hadn't stated my source. In fact, there were two that I found. Firstly, in the introductory essay (Page 12) by Roger Taylor from Fay Godwin's book 'Landmarks' (Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2001), he states

"Without any formal training, but with a background in publishing and the world of literature, she began taking portraits of writers and poets for use on book jackets".

It should be remembered that her former husband, Tony Godwin, was a well-known bookseller and later worked for Penguin books.

Secondly, in Fay Godwins final interview, with David Corfield, for Practical Photography, December 2004 (www.ephotozine.com/article/No-Mans-Land--Fay-Godwins-last-interview-67), she talked about her start in photography.

"....I was, and still am, an avid reader and so when I first started I chose to photograph many of the great writers in this country to try and earn a living.
One of my earliest jobs was to photograph Ted Hughes, in 1971. I photographed him for a publisher and it all started from there".


2. I stated that she was a perfectionist with respect to the film and print paper chosen, without giving further detail. Roger Taylor, again, in the introductory essay to 'Landmarks', talks in detail about Fay Godwins choice of equipment and materials and her demand for excellence. For example,

- "Godwin has worked exclusively with two film sizes, 35mm and 120mm roll film" (Page 14)

- "The larger format of 120 roll film improves the quality of the result exponentially (compared to 35mm) and is used most frequently by Godwin for her landscapes". (Page 14)

- "........Godwin is a consummate print-maker controlling the nuances of her negatives to an exquisite degree in order to hold information in a range of tones from shimmering highlight to the deepest shadow. The size of her prints is crucial to the manner in which they are viewed and Godwin has never printed larger than 24 x 20 inches, most frequently preferring the more intimate 16 x 12." (Page 15)

- "Over the years Godwin's prints have become more refined and delicate, and at one point she discarded two dustbins of exhibition prints she thought too dark and melancholic"  (Page 15)



Bibliography

- 'Land', Fay Godwin (with essay by John Fowles), 1985. Published by William Heinemann Ltd

- ' Our Forbidden Land', by Fay Godwin, 1990. Published by Jonathan Cape Ltd.

- 'Landmarks', by Fay Godwin (with essay by Roger Taylor), 2001. Published by Dewi Lewis Publishing

- 'Fay Godwin, Land Revisited'. 2010. Video transcript (interview with Roger Taylor), National Media Museum.

- 'How Land Came About', Fay Godwin, 1994. Edited account (in 2010) by Fay Godwin to support original 'Land' exhibition at the National Media Museum.