I was recently interviewed by Conor Risch, editor of respected US-based photography magazine PDN (Photo District News). The interview is published in the March 2012 issue of the magazine. We discuss the ‘Huangshan Ltd’ project in particular and the framework behind my work. The magazine will be featuring five images from the series. You can download the pdf of the interview here. To see more images from the series go to www.jonwyatt.co.uk/portfolio
Please join us for the private view of ‘Luminance’ at 10GS, Mayfair on Wednesday 2nd November from 6 – 8.30pm
An exhibition of photographs by Judith Lyons, Wendy Pye & Jon Wyatt
Drinks and canapes will be served.
RVSP please. mail@jonwyatt.co.uk
Jon Wyatt
An award-winning landscape photographer, Jon’s work has been published and exhibited in the UK and Europe, and is represented by the Diemar/Noble Gallery in London.
“Our continued disconnection from the physical landscape provides the framework for all my work. Various techniques are utilised to recreate this detachment through the imagery, exploring the dynamics and ethics of land ownership, preservation and visual wonder. And how, ironically, our lack of connection may be the last best hope for the preservation of ecosystems.”
Luminance features work from the series ‘Sound of Jura’ (2010). This is the name given to the straits separating the Isle of Jura in the Inner Hebrides from the Scottish mainland. The Gaelic name is ‘An Linne Rosach’ meaning the ‘Sound of Disappointment’.
Judith Lyons
Judith Lyons is a photographic artist. A graduate of both Central Saint Martin’s School of Art and Design and the London College of Communication, for the last four years Judith has worked predominantly with camera-less methods of photographic image production. Her work has been exhibited in institutions and galleries both nationally and internationally and has been featured in books and journals.
“Using traditional analogue and contemporary digital photographic processes, Judith Lyons’ work demonstrates an engagement with the natural world and with the perpetual cycle of birth, growth, decay, death and rebirth”.
Luminance features work from two series, ’A Different Nature’ (2009) and ‘Un/Natural Forms’ (2010).
Wendy Pye
Wendy is a commercial photographer, photography lecturer and photographic artist. She graduated from The M.A in Photographic Arts at The London College of Communication, London in 2009. Wendy’s work over the last four years has been responding to the well-known natural beauty and suicide spot, Beachy Head on the South England coast. Her work has been exhibited internationally and featured in press and journals.
“A common strand running through my work is in an interest in exploring the cyclical nature of states of being, particularly those that bridge, or represents something on the cusp of change.”
Luminance features work from the series titled ’Luminance in Flux’ (2010), which uses light interventions to respond to the sentiment embedded in the landscape.
art@10gs
10 Grosvenor Street, London W1K 4QB
Exhibition Until Dec 16:
Exhibition Opening Times: Monday - Friday 10am - 5.30pm
Weekend viewings by appointment
Transport:
4 minutes walk from Bond Street and Oxford Circus Tube
Buses: C2, 15, 159, 453, 3, 12, 88, 94, 6, 13, 23, 139, 7, 10, 73, 98, 390, 55
From the series ‘Huangshan Ltd
From the series ‘Sound of Jura’
From the series ‘Bamboo (Six Seconds)
I’m very pleased to announce that I’ll be working with the Diemar/Noble Gallery in London. They are currently displaying a 45 x 36 inch framed print of this image from the ‘Huangshan Ltd’ series.
The series comprises ten images. Limited edition prints will be available in two sizes - 45 x 36 inches, in an edition of three & 24 x 20 inches, in an edition of seven.
Looking forward to the Rencontres d’Arles Photography Festival in early July. I’ll be showing three prints there as part of the Galerie Huit Open Salon show - two from the series Bamboo (Six Seconds) and one from the series Huangshan Ltd. Though that’s really a lame excuse for spending a week in the beautiful old town of Arles in the south of France, smothered in all things visual.
A highlight should be French graffiti artist/photographer JR’s closing night presentation. If you haven’t seen his inspiring 2011 TED Award prize speech then you really should - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PAy1zBtTbw - on the subject of changing the world using art by, unlikely as it sounds, flyposting massive scale images.
Hereontheweb.co.uk is the new(ish) blog from photo editor, writer and curator Harry Hardie. Until recently Exhibitions Director at Host Gallery/Foto8 in London, Harry is now director of ‘Here’, a company that publishes, exhibits, teaches and supports photography. He is featuring the ‘Bamboo (Six Seconds)’ project here.
Every six seconds fifteen acres of the planet are deforested. That’s 60,000 sqm, or six hectares, or nine football pitches. Every six seconds….the time it’s taken you to read these words. Shot in a bamboo forest in Anhui Province, China, the exposure time of each of these images is six seconds.
For the Chinese bamboo holds iconic status, representing the harmony between nature and man - and symbolising civilisation. In folklore, literature, calligraphy and painting bamboo’s characteristics embody the finest human virtues - integrity, humility and purity. Comparing a person to bamboo is the highest possible praise of their character.
Touted as a miracle crop to counter deforestation, bamboo is one of the fastest growing plants on earth. Growing up to four feet a day, one hectare of bamboo sequesters sixty-two tons of carbon dioxide per year. Generating up to 35% more oxygen than an equivalent stand of trees it can be used to produce everything from food, fabrics, paper, building material and oil.
However rising demand from the west has brought new environmental concerns for bamboo forests. Increased use of unregulated pesticides for production plus the strong chemical solvents required to process the bamboo have poisoned watercourses and threaten precious animal habitat. Indiscriminate harvesting has resulted in half the world’s species of bamboo now being in imminent danger of extinction.
For more from the series go to my portfolio website here, or on this permanent gallery page on this blog.
Huangshan Ltd
Huangshan (literally ‘Yellow Mountain’) in Anhui province, is one of China’s most iconic and important tourist attractions. A range of mountains consisting of 72 granite peaks, the Mount Huangshan Scenic Area attracts over 2 million visitors per annum ranking it amongst the top 5 tourist destinations in China. It has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its scenery and role as a habitat for rare and threatened species. The World Heritage Site covers a core area of 154 square km and a buffer zone of 142 square km.
Known to the Chinese as ‘the number one mountain under heaven’, Huangshan has inspired centuries of painters, poets and scholars. Its iconic beauty ranks it with the Yangtze River and the Great Wall as one of the most potent cultural and spiritual symbols of China. It is a ’sister national park’ of Yosemite National Park in the US and ’sister mountain’ of the Jungfrau in Switzerland.
The Mount Huangshan Scenic Area is privately owned and managed by the ‘Huangshan Tourism and Development Co. Ltd’ which is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. 51.5% of its shares are held by Chinese and foreign investors, the remainder being owned by the local government of the nearby city of Tunxi. China’s decades of rapid economic reforms and an unwillingness to allocate money and resources to such areas - has in part led to this process of privatisation.
The full series of images from this project can now be seen on my portfolio website here or on this permanent gallery page on this blog.
Glacier d'Argentiere, Chamonix
I am pleased to announce that i have been invited to contribute images to Lensmodern. Lensmodern is an online photographic handling agency and library which was “conceived and created by a group of the world’s top photographers as the only marketplace appropriate for their award-winning work. Lensmodern provides the perfect environment in which to view, sample, license usage, or buy fine art prints of some of the world’s most creative photographic images.”
Selected photographs from my ‘Naked’ series are now available through Lensmodern as fine art prints or available for licensing. The ‘Naked’ series features snowscapes photographed in mountain ranges on several different continents.
Association of Photography Collectives Exhibition
April 13 - 5th May 2011
AOP Gallery, 81 Leonard St, London EC2A 4QS
AOP Collectives is a permanent photographic print collection, held by the Association of Photographers Gallery in London. Several of my limited edition prints are held in this collection and five of them will be on display at this exhibition. One image will also be used as the inside cover of the April/May edition of Image Magazine.
My two recent projects - ‘Huangshan Ltd’ and ‘Bamboo (Six Seconds)’ - mark a slight shift in emphasis in my work - though the progression to this point is clear from a stroll through my ‘generic’ portfolios - ‘land’, ’sea’ etc. Both projects also share a framework which I intend to continue to pursue in the future. Below is my ‘artist statement’ which should explain all.
Artist Statement
The fragility of man’s relationshiop with the landscape provides the framework for my work. I shoot in such a way as to deliberately limit the viewer’s engagement with my photos. This seemingly backwards approach - almost pushing the viewer away - is meant to mirror man’s lack of connection, our detachment, from the physical landscapes I photograph. And ironically, it’s this lack of connection that may be the last best hope for the preservation of these vulnerable ecosystems.
I refer to the work as ‘occluded landscapes’, meaning ‘to cause to become closed’.
To recreate this detachment I reveal no horizon line in the work, offer minimal foreground detail and often obscure the subject with clouds or encroaching darkness. Immersive and claustrophobic, all documentary sense of ‘place’ is removed. With no sign of humanity, the viewer is disorientated and struggles to grasp the scale of the landscape. Denied reference points, their gaze is roving and undirected within the image. The viewer is distanced, their engagement with the image limited. Finally, accompanying text - shown after the images have been seen - is used to explicitly redefine the true context of the work.
I’ve recently returned from 2 weeks on the Isle of Jura in the Scottish Inner Hebrides. Many thanks to Jane and Hugh who looked after us so well, their idyllic cottage providing stunning views of the Paps - ‘mountains’ rising to 785m at their highest point.
The island’s relatively small but boggy interior and remote nature (two ferries from the Scottish mainland) combined with extraordinary light, meant I found myself drawn to the views over the Sound of Jura. These are the straits separating the island from the Scottish mainland, which, draped in ethereal light, are known intriguingly in Gaelic as ‘An Linne Rosach’ - ‘The Sound of Disappointment’. The full series is now up on my portfolio website.
The city of Yangzhou in eastern China has nearly three centuries of history and tradition which is colliding head-on with modern China’s current exponential growth. Commissioned by the City of Yangzhou to shoot this dichotomy from a western photographer’s perspective, I witnessed how this small city by Chinese standards [in the UK it'd be our third largest city!] is embracing the rush for modernity whilst diligently (and perhaps, too enthusiastically) cultivating its rich heritage for the booming tourism market.
The images will form part of the Yangzhou Photo Festival in March 2011 and have been published in China Photo Press Magazine.
On the Col de Tourmalet - the final climb
A still from the Etape du Tour - a 113 mile bike race from Pau in the French Pyrenees to the Col du Tourmalet - that’s me on the left by the way - and yes it did hurt! The race replicates one of the most gruelling mountain stages from the 2010 Tour de France and is ridden by the professionals a few days after us. A long winter of training paid off and I completed the course in 10.5 hrs. Thanks to team members Andy B (shown, right) Chris and Barry.