End frame: Lights of New York City 1972 by Ernst Haas

Glenys Garnett

I am a photographer and visual artist and use photography as my primary medium to realise my creative ideas around nature and the natural environment. I use a variety of in-camera techniques like ICM and multiple exposure, vintage lenses, scanning and wet mediums like cyanotype to incorporate into my work. My approach is to emphasise the beauty of subject matter through creative composition rather than document reality. I feel it is important to discover the beauty and diversity of nature around me so I work predominantly in my local environment.

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Like most people who get asked to write an end frame, my first thoughts were, how on earth can I pin this down to a single image when there are so many photographs that have influenced me over the years? The gritty moors above Haworth, photographed by Bill Brandt made me want to take the walk up to Top Withens and capture those same scenes and started me on the track to capturing my own landscapes. Like most landscape photographers, I’ve done my fair share of tramping the hills, moors and coast of the UK and abroad, trying to capture the essence of the landscape in a picture.

In 2017 I started to become disillusioned with my landscape photography, and I realised I needed a new approach. I decided to turn elsewhere for my inspiration, and it wasn’t those gritty landscapes that captured my imagination. My head was turned by photographers with a different approach to seeing and making landscapes, some contemporary and some historical ones.

I’ve chosen the image Lights of New York City 1972 by Ernst Haas.

This image marked a change in my approach not only to landscape but to all aspects of my photography. The fact that it was taken 50 years ago adds to the intrigue and unique nature of it.

Over the last 6 years, my approach to making images has changed mainly due to having a better understanding of the way I see things. This came about through a serious introspective examination about the way I feel about the world around me and how I want to express my personal vision.
I tend to see subjects as shapes, structures, patterns, textures and colours, and I get a lot of my inspiration from many contemporary and abstract landscape photographers, many of which are breaking boundaries, like Ola Kolehmainen, Chris Friel, Andy Gray, Valda Bailey, Doug Chinnery, to name a few. I admire that all these photographers use image making to photograph the world not as we see it but how they want it to be.