John Davies was born in 1949 in County Durham and spent his formative years living in farming and coal mining communities. He attended Nottingham and studied photography there graduating in 1974. He became fascinated by the rural landscape during this period with visits to the west coast of Ireland culminating in the publication of the monograph ’Mist Mountain Water Wind’ 1985 and later reprinted in ’Skylines’ 1993. This also included work taken in Scotland and England taken between 1976 and 1981. John Davies has produced several books and has exhibited his work widely.

The book I have been asked to look at is the ‘The British Landscape’. Chris Boot Publishing ISBN-13: 978-0954689476 J. Davies 2006.

This work was taken between 1979 and 2005 and includes rural Scotland and the Lake District as well as the industrial landscape and urban areas. The first thing I notice about the prints is how well executed they are - extremely good quality with much detail. They have not been ‘overworked’ it can be easy to fall into the trap of over dramatising a landscape, especially in the modern digital age and photoshop filters. The pictures have a documentary style that adds clarity and truth to the work which I am sure will stand the test of time and shows the change from a more industrialised Britain to the world we have today with more service industries rather than heavy industry of the past.

The pictures show a living landscape with people and vehicles going about their daily lives within the space Davies captures this can be seen in the picture above ‘Quakers Yard Bridge, Merthyr Tidfil 1996’ and in this sense Davies has captured a living landscape. This is very different to the style of Ansel Adams whose landscapes seem to be set in ‘aspic’ devoid of people. Although I appreciate the way he worked and the area he worked did not always lend itself to people being included in the pictures).

In fact Davies can be seen to use almost every tool in the landscape photographers armoury. ‘New Street Station, Birmingham 2000’ (below) uses opposing diagonals, Diamonds in the foreground and the train tracks leading you into the centre of the image, however all of the other elements of the image make it very difficult to just have this central focal point and forces you to look at all the elements in the picture including all the buildings before you eventually settle on the tall building in the centre. The sky is subtle and a lesser photographer may well have ‘over’ burnt this in, detracting from the documentary purpose of this image giving us an over dramatised image. This composition shows the extremely well developed visual ability of Davies.

The picture below of ‘Festiniog Railway, Blaenau Ffestiniog, Snowdonia 1994’ is another example of a complex composition in Davies style.

Although Davies is a photographer of obvious ability some of his choice of lighting and harsh shadows do not work for me on a personal level. Although you can argue that this is a documentary approach to landscape photography I do not think it should be an excuse for poor technique. This pictures below I believe are examples of this with the harsh shadows adding nothing. Although detail has been kept in both the highlights and shadow areas.

Top picture below is ‘All Saints, Newcastle-upon-Tyne 2009’ this to me is a pure record of a scene with harsh shadows.

Bottom picture below is ‘Durham Ox, Sheffield 1981” I do not like the shadow in this image although they do appear to be in the shape of chimneys which adds to the idea of industrialisation.

Davies work is of a very high quality and shows a period of great change in the industrial landscape of Britain. Maybe it is no coincidence that the start of this work was when Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister and Britain’s industrial landscape changed with decimation of the coal industry which features strong in Davies landscape work. The work here will undoubtably show its worth as time moves forwards and it would be interesting to see the landscape today and see the changes that have already happened.

Bibliography -

http://www.johndavies.uk.com/