subscribe 0330 333 1113 I http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I 22 June 2019 27
new landscapes
beginnings in photography,
composing views of Britain’s
‘honeypot’ locations. ‘There are a
thousand images of Durdle Door
and there are going to be plenty of
people who have done it better than
you,’ she says. ‘When I went down
that road I thought, “What is the
point? What am I trying to say? I’m
not saying anything about me, I’m
just capturing what’s in front of
me.”’ Nonetheless, she is respectful
of the need to attempt images made
before: ‘Even as a painter you try to
emulate the masters just to learn
and hone your own technique.’Tin cans and cemetery bins
So, if not Durdle Door at f/22,
then what? For Sheffield-based
Al Brydon, photographing the
landscape might begin with a walk
in the Peak District and a backpack
filled with tin cans. These are
his cameras, each one crudely
customised with a pinhole half-way
up and a piece of 5x7in darkroom
paper placed inside. ‘The whole thing
is then taped up so no additional
light can enter,’ he says, ‘then it is
placed outside for months.’ The
resulting images are solargraphs,
which is also the title of his latest
book. However, publication was
far from Al’s mind when he
gaffer-taped his first tin can
to a tree over six years ago.
‘It was never meant to be a body
of work,’ he explains. ‘One of my
friends made one and suggested
I give it a go, which I duly did. It
wasn’t anything conscious – the
only stipulation was that it was
somewhere I wanted to be. But it
was a really good excuse to go out
into the landscape and place them
where you want.’ In all, he left more
than 100 tin-can pinhole cameras
dotted around various locations,
some for over a year.
Al describes his approach to
photography as serendipitous and
Solargraphs owes much to chance,
being a collection of images borne
more by the seasonal vagaries of
light, damp and weather than by his
initial choice of location. ‘Part of the
enjoyment was going back trying
to find them! The landscape can
change dramatically in that time. If
you go out in winter and come back
in summer, it’s completely different.
Sometimes the paper would rot.
After a while moisture forms in the
can so the paper essentially decays
and you get these bizarre dripping
marks, mould and fungus.’
Far less random is his
ongoing series, ‘Cemetery Bins.© valda bailey