JEM SOUTHAM

Jem Southam is a photographer born in Bristol in 1950 who is greatly inspired by the works of William Eggleston. He began working with photography in the 70's, recording the trees in his home area. To this day, he still visits back repetitively, to record the changes in the trees and the natural world and often how humans are making the environment adapt in our presence.

According to British Photography, Southam says

"My overall artistic intentions are to make work that explores how our history, our memory, and our systems of knowledge combine to influence our responses to the places we inhabit, visit, create, and dream of.. I eschew grandeur for the sake of it preferring to revel in a subtler scale and history. But there's still an epic story to be told which exists wherever humans have made their homes."

He started his project 'The Painter's Pool' in 2002. Southam became good friends with a painter, Mike Garton, who had spent twenty years painting the Stoke Woods, trying to get everything perfect. Southam stated "to say he was obsessive would be understating it". When the painter was away from the woods her would hide his canvases in hidden dens. One day early in this project, he noticed a willow tree that had fallen and was partly blocking the stream to which the artist reacted by redirecting the stream, made a dam from the tree and constructed a pond which he maintained secretly all those years, until he told Jem Southam. Garton didn't often paint the pool, and only really focused on it during the last years of his life. It was then, when Garton became ill, that Southam decided to seek this pool. He claims that his aim was to try to understand and contemplate the difficulties Garton faced, who told Southam that he found it difficult to draw or paint while the visuals were so complex; 

‘How does someone who draws or paints deal with the extraordinary visual complexities presented when standing in the canopy of a wood? How can one possibly make a series of marks on the surface of a piece of paper when confronted say by the tens of thousands of twigs and leaves present, as one stands and contemplates such a view?’

And so Southam found himself in the same woods, trying to ask himself the same questions. "The series of pictures grew partly out of that motivation and I have continued to be fascinated by the challenges of making pictures in similar conditions. I wish to make pictures that are complex and demand a patient attention."

'The Painter’s Pool, 9 November 2003'

When I look at these images, it's then that I understand where both artists are coming from in terms of complexity to the image.

It almost becomes hard to define what elements of the image are located where: it all becomes one. Without the branch at the top, to me it would look like a carefully plotted bunch of spots, giving the photographs a very painterly quality.

I feel that you had to actually look at the image to understand the density and layers that it has within it, or it all jumbles together, however the colours help assist the eye in this; the leave at the top are more yellow as they've been exposed to more sun, and the browns on the lower part of the image help ground it. The branch at the top then helps bring more context in and guides the viewer into understanding what this image is actually of.

This photo was taken a year after he started the project, on one of his many return visits, following the path of watching time change nature as had the painter he was so inspired by.

This image is a lot less chaotic than the one above, and instead offers a feeling of tranquillity. I believe this to be effective because of the natural colours, and how we connect with nature and what we associate with it; life, fresh air, and often untouched landscapes. It's a break from the concrete world that humans have built for themselves and brings us back to the beginning of our existence. These trees are older than us, and have lived through many of our generations, they're a consistency. While humans ruin that consistency for their own benefit, places like this that seem to be untouched are a sanctuary and an escape.

This image shows the natural process of destruction; it's unavoidable. There's dead trees fallen over, showing the passing of time, but to almost rectify that we have what looks like healthy standing trees; the circle of life is truly seen in this image. 

I quite like the work by Southam and the story and meaning behind the images, and I feel like my intention with my work realted to it in the sense that the locations are spatially similar. 

I really like the natural feeling, however I feel with mine I want to combine that feeling with the unnatural.