Category: Personal Development

Proposal (as at July 2025)

My ongoing practice centres around my attempts to capture the emotional landscapes evoked by the places I know well and ‘The lake’ has become a central figure in my photographic practice. Although not the place I grew up, it is a place of significance as it has become a playground for my children to create their own memories and as a consequence, it is a feature of my own journey through parenthood. Also, for my mother, it has become her beloved home in the second phase of her life and is a haven of tranquillity and awe. I explore the lake and its surrounding environment as a space rich with memory and a witness to personal transformation. It is where family, friends and community gather, and childhood lives are nurtured. It is also a place of solitude, and where I witness the moments shared here as embedded in this living, breathing environment, it is a place that invites both close observation and distance, and I frequently return to observe, to wait, and to document.

This quote below is from a blog post that I wrote for AD7801, which comments on my stepfathers attitude to the lake. I have included this to highlight how it has become ‘the place’ for my children. It is where their own childhoods play out, with their friendships developing and growing alongside the natural environment and a life long love of nature and place is being instilled.

“David has encouraged his grandchildren (my son and daughter being among them) and their friends to make use of the space around the central farm to build camps, swim in the lakes and make bike courses, among other things. My stepfather is an incredibly clever man. He seeks out problems so that he can invent and create solutions. As a result, his environment; the house and the land, constantly changes and is an homage to his eccentricity. Above all else, to see others utilising the space, thus giving it purpose, gives him absolute joy and endless entertainment”

I will also include images from my own significant, meaningful landscapes which came before this one. Of particular importance is Guiting Wood, which I give credit to as my educator in nature. I spent countless hours immersed here, with my sibling and cousins. I frequently return, as though anchored somehow, and can’t help but reflect on how this small part of the world has played such a key role in my love of landscape and my enquiry into ideas around sense of place. Additionally, I will study my immediate landscape environment, where I have resided for the last 15 years and explored in detail, during that time.

In all cases, it is the nature connection which plays its role in creating these everlasting bonds and I am interested in how the places themselves, contain elements of our history and presence. A sense that someone is ‘in a place’ although not physically could be seen as spiritual, a sense of belonging and familiarity, even though the leaves have changed, the water is new, the DNA of those who have been there, is contained within. I will examine existing discourse around landscape and memory to better understand how our cultural identity is bound up in the natural world and how our imagination is shaped by the places we spend time in.

Immersion in these environments will be a key aspect of my project. Often too rushed, I don’t always succeed in capturing the essence of my surroundings. Using the research and subsequent inspiration I have gathered so far, from practitioners such as Jitka Hanzlova, Jem Southam and Nicholas Hughes, each of whom, have mastered deeper study methods of their chosen subjects, I hope to do deliver a thoughtful and worthwhile project. I will attempt to create a body of work that invites the viewer to pause, reflect and consider the fragility and / or strength of their own connections to their environment.

My early thoughts on presentation are to make large scale prints to accompany a handmade photobook. I hope to create memorable work which is varied and unique.

“I was born in a country of brooks and rivers, in a corner of Champagne, called Le Vallage for the great number of its valleys. The most beautiful of its places for me was the hollow of a valley by the side of fresh water, in the shade of willows…My pleasure still is to follow the stream, to walk along its banks in the right direction, in the direction of the flowing water, the water that leads life towards the next village…Dreaming beside the river, I gave my imagination to the water, the green, clear water, the water that makes the meadows green. …The stream doesn’t have to be ours; the water doesn’t have to be ours. The anonymous water knows all my secrets. And the same memory issues from every spring.”

― Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter

Although this is my initial proposal, I anticipate the project will change. I have been looking through the ‘Photographers Sketchbooks’ book and note Alec Soths words on process and how in taking a single image into building a series will inevitably change direction and intention as it goes.

Already, I am thinking about loss of access to nature and how this can impact future generations; Where is the motivation to care for something if you hhave no connection to it?

In the work I set out to make for this project, I will look at how to intersect each aspect, combining the personal, ecological and geological.

Early ideas for images:

1. Children / others enoying their natural environment – demonstrate the benefit to being in nature, stepping away from tech, becoming creative, developing sense of self, forging social relationships.
2. Climate impact on our spaces
3. Memories, how they contain pieces of ourselves from times past.
4. The nature connnection – passing on of knowledge to future generations
5. What has been before – structures, myths and legends etc

How might the project be finally realised?

1. Large scale print? – maybe one single alt process print alongside others
2. Lightboxes, selected images plus smaller, framed prints
3. Potentially A2 prints in a circle (see Fig 1. screen shot of TV show inspiration)
4. Supporting book, with full series. to show the extent of work
5. Postcards of the prints?

Thoughts following feedback on proposal:

• What will I draw on specifically?
• Mindmap of each theme / idea, detailing concerns (see fig 2 below)
• look at the social, aesthetic, ecological and personal aspects of practioners work
• How do practitioners use composition, pictorial space etc

Critical writings

• list of key writings that I have already looked at (Tilley, Ingold et al)
• cross over of themes and ideas – intersect
• critical writing to include discussion around the themes as well as photography itself

Previous research and practice – especially look at AD7802 and pull out the themes, ideas, practitioners and critical writing from there. What can I expand on and investigate further? This was a module that had great impact on my own thoughts about the potential in my practice.

Other initial ideas and thoughts – quick bullet list

• Images – study images already taken. Could they kick start a direction?
• Could I incorporate video?
• Remember that a series doesn’t have to all be one genre, think about the theme relevance.
• Detailed shots
• Wider shots
• People
• Ambiguous
• formats – analogue, digital
• Alt process – large scale cyanotype? would need to settle on theme quickly
• combination / blend of formats
• book – does this add value?