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In this series I am attempting to probe my motivations as a photographer, to question my practice, curiosity and creativity. This essay’s focus, Intimate Landscapes, is one in which my motivations are at their least compromised.
Why so? Well, I have never had a commercial or professional incentive to make intimate landscapes. But I have done so out of response to what I find in the natural world, and from the inspiration of some of our photographic predecessors and contemporaries. These are pictures that I have made for the joy and sense of discovery alone. Although I may have sold a few prints from some of the photographs, and used many in articles and books, intimate landscapes are never requested by publishing clients, or by my gallery colleagues. So at the outset, intimate landscapes are, mercifully, commercially pointless!
As an aside, it is worth noting that when we showed David Ward’s wonderful recent work in the gallery last year, composed entirely of intimate landscapes, it proved the most commercially successful exhibition we have had. We still have requests for them, even since the lockdown.