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The Smaller Pictures: In Praise of the Artist’s Talk

Jem Southam shows students some of his 10"x8" contact prints from his rock falls series © Amano Samarpan
Jem Southam shows students at study visit in Exeter some of his 10″x8″ contact prints from his rock falls series © Amano Samarpan

 
Last Saturday a group of students and I were treated to the best part of a day with photographer Jem Southam. He talked about his career and his practice and also spent some time looking at students’ projects and portfolios. Southam is one of the UK’s most celebrated landscape practitioners, and his prints are in major collections worldwide. Southam has produced the majority of his work nearby wherever he has been living at the time – mostly around the South West of England. His pictures are often printed to large sizes, made possible by his use of a 10”x8” plate camera, which allows for exceptional print clarity when the negative is enlarged. His work is, however, not ostentatious: far from it in fact. His images are often described as meditative or pensive, quiet and reflective. His projects, such as The Pond at Upton Pyne, The Painter’s Pool, and his most recent monograph The River Winter patiently observe the gradual transition of change, seasonally, ecologically and topographically, within a space over a period of time. His work also confronts persistent ideas within landscape imagery – specifically the myth of the pastoral idyll, challenged quite directly in his Red River series and metaphorically in his studies of rock falls along the South East coast and in Normandy.
All of this, of course, you could learn about from textbooks, essays, online reviews and interviews too. So why make the trek down/up/over/ across the country just to hear it from the horse’s mouth?
What I found most exciting about Jem’s talk was not so much hearing more about some of the work which I was already fairly familiar with (although that would have been worth the trip in itself). No: it was hearing him talk about his other projects that haven’t been exhibited or published (either in their entirety or at all), that I found more revealing. I didn’t know that one of the most momentous exercises on his journey into landscape practice was a nine-week hike he made in the summer of 1975 from Berwick-on-Tweed back to Bristol, with his brother and his Leica. He didn’t really make a ‘project’ out of it in the end, but it provided him with some invaluable lessons about the nature of landscape and the English countryside. We learnt more about how his domestic life and surroundings have effected his practice: for decades he documented the view from his kitchen window onto the family garden in Exeter – the enclosed space offering for him, a mental space to formulate his ideas around the highly contested nature of the land, particularly in the UK which is relatively tiny. Another project that you won’t find on Google is the series he made titled Josie. For a period of time after his daughter was born he observed and captured the ways that he and Josie’s mother, as fairly typical parents, instinctively infused her surroundings with concepts of ‘nature’ – such as the introduction of the floral patterns on the nursery curtains, festooning the home with house plants, and incouraging Josie’s interaction with the pet cat.
These projects will probably not be considered by critics as Southam’s ‘best’ works, but that is certainly not to say they have been any less important, in terms of shaping his ideas and hence his practice. Towards the end of the afternoon Jem repeated an idiom that will resonate I’m sure with many, about needing to take photographs to help discover why we feel the urge to photograph something.
What do you think is more important – the ‘big’ pictures within an artist’s oeuvre or the ‘smaller’ ones? How do you distinguish between ‘best’ and ‘most important’ work in your own practice?


Posted by author: Jesse

8 thoughts on “The Smaller Pictures: In Praise of the Artist’s Talk

  • Hello. I was thoroughly absorbed by this experience. Jem Southam is a modest and approachable person, and his presentation had an immediacy and accessibility to me as a newcomer to the study of the visual arts. His frequent reference to writing and his interest in combining his pictures with text was particularly exciting to me.I believe that the more human beings can work and collaborate across the artificial boundaries that we have created the more hope there is that the world will become a better place.

    • Hi Alison It was encouraging that some like yourself from a different creative platform could get something worthwhile from this study day; it also proves the point that different disciplines come under the same umbrella even though their differences are relevant.

  • As a painter, I was fascinated and privileged to hear Jem’s account of his approach to landscape – it reinforced, and clarified, much of what I feel about landscape but have yet to find words for, let alone an apprpriate language in paint. I was sorry I had to leave at 3.30
    for a 4 o’clock commitment but nevertheless I came away inspired, with copious notes.
    Thank you, Amano and to Jesse, but above all thank you Jem.

  • I think this was a worthwhile and fascinating visit. I found myself constantly in sympathy with Jem’s views and ideas. I feel inspired to try new approaches to my own projects. Landscape is my next level 2 course and the genre in which I have the most interest. I can’t wait to get started….

  • Thank you so much for securing this wonderful study visit. The planning and the joining instructions made it so much easier for me to assess my ability to join the day without an enabler present. Being independent made it easier to mix with other students.
    I found Jem’s work approach fascinating especially as I know the areas that he photographs well. Bringing narrative to my work is a journey that I am just embarking on and having this talk before moving on through the rest of C&N and onto the next level. I am yet to blog about the day but I will be this weekend. As a person he was very pleasant and communicated in an interesting and digestible way.
    Thank you again Jesse and Amano. Of course, a big thank you to Jem too.

  • I loved the day which was made extra special because it was on my doorstep. As I wrote in my blog, I found JS a superb story teller who so humbly & generously gave of his time and expertise for our benefit. (blog: http://www.annasocablog.wordpress.com)
    Thanks Amano( for all your hard work), Jesse (for the support) & Jem (for the volumes of inspiration & information)

  • Like everyone else, I was so pleased I was able to attend this event. Listening to Jem’s fascinating way of talking about his approach photography was both illuminating and inspiring.
    Many thanks to Jem, Amano, Jesse and Exeter Library staff for producing such a great day!

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