Downward Skies

I have mentioned a number of times the special relationship I have built up over more than a decade with that idyllic chunk of rural Hampshire occupied by Mottisfont Abbey, and in particular with the stretch of the River Test that runs through it. Until recently, it had been something of a default setting. Not sure where to go this Sunday? Drive over to Mottisfont. Not sure what to photograph? Why not the river at Mottisfont?

The whole estate is in National Trust ownership, but most people go to visit the house and formal gardens. This suits me fine as, even at the busiest times of year, it leaves the broader landscape of the estate (an enormous acreage of river, woodland and farm) virtually unvisited. Away from weekends, especially, you can guarantee solitude, but still be within easy reach of a friendly teashop. There is even a second-hand bookshop within the Abbey, which has a mysterious propensity to stock photographic treasures -- for example, I found a first edition hardback of David Bailey's Goodbye, Baby, and Amen a few years ago (not a book I'd normally have sought out), and Marketa Luskacova's wonderful Pilgrims (a book I'd been seeking for years). I keep half-expecting copies of The Decisive Moment or The Solitude of Ravens to turn up.

For several years I worked intensively at a series of pictures of the river, mainly but not exclusively using an old Agfa Isolette II folding camera (bought for £15, and which turned out to be fitted with the sought-after Solinar lens / Compur shutter combination). I got to know the Trust's estate manager, and as he liked my work he gave me access to the grounds during the winter closed season, and then very generously part-funded an exhibition of some of the work in 2003 (The Colour of the Water), which stayed up for 18 months. It was the closest I have yet come to feeling like a "real" artist.

Although I did self-publish a little booklet to sell with the exhibition, I have since struggled to do justice to the images in book form. I'm not really sure why. I think it has something to do with trying to negotiate the gulf between a stranger's perception of what are, in reality, many quite similar images of "just" water, and the meaning that these images and their small variations have acquired for me, not to mention their emotional significance in my own life. Although I strongly believe in taking pictures without regard to any third-party opinions, to make a book is different: it is an act of communication, and you have to meet potential readers half-way. This can sometimes be a more demanding task than it might seem.

Another problem has been doing justice to the film originals. The Agfa camera is simplicity itself, a superb optic mounted on a bellows on a light-tight box, with controls restricted to manual focus, aperture and shutter speed. It produces subtle, rich 6x6 negatives (generally on Fujicolor 400 ASA film), which I then proceed to travesty by scanning them on my Epson flatbed scanner. I'm sure that -- drum-scanned by a sympathetic expert scanner -- these would make superb wall-sized prints; as it is I can't print them larger than 12" square anyway, but even at book size the (poor) quality of the scanning shows, to the expert eye at least.

But I keep working at it, and here is the latest interactive version of a book called Downward Skies which I have put on Issuu, and which is the closest I've yet come to a satisfactory presentation of this work. Your comments would be much appreciated. Please note that although this PDF "dummy" is fitted out with all the bells and whistles of self-publication, it is not yet available to buy, though you are welcome to download the PDF.

Open publication