Image of the Week

This week's image comes from Simon Roberts, as part of his 'We, English' Project. 

“Simon Roberts travelled throughout England in a motorhome between 2007 and 2008, for this portfolio of large-format tableaux photographs of the English at leisure. Photographing ordinary people engaged in a variety of pastimes, Roberts finds beauty in the mundane; the result is an elegiac exploration of identity, attachment to home and land, and the relationship between people and place. This is the most significant contribution to the photography of England in recent years.” 
Chris Boot, October 2009

Simon's work is featured as part of the Landmarks: The Fields of Photography Exhibition at Somerset House, London which is open to the public (for free may I add!) until the 28th April. I went for a little look around today, and I can tell you it is well worth a visit. The exhibition features work from 81 photographers all around the diverse subject of the landscape photograph. 

Curator, William A. Ewing writes "Photographers have been at work imaging the earth's surface ever since photography was invented; as a genre, 'landscape' has remained of foremost interest, rivalling portraiture as the most heavily practiced of photography's domains." As you walk through the many different rooms (all themed around a different view, or 'signpost', of the landscape, including 'scar' and 'witness'), you see how varied the response from the photographer can be towards his enviroment. This exhibition really is a celebration of our world, with all it's shining points as well as all it's flaws, and the people who capture it in photography. 

This post would be absurdly long if I mentioned every amazing photograph in the exhibition, but I can tell you a few I particularly liked. Simon Robert's pieces remind you how to find beauty in the mundane and the spectacular, showing images from both his 'We, English' and 'XXX Olympiad'. Mark Klett & Bryon Wolfe's panoramic view of the Grand Canyon is gorgeous, taken over 2 days, the changes in the light make you see the over photographed landscape in a new way. Pieter Hugo's image from his project 'Permanent Error' is impacting in its honesty, showing how poverty can affect the landscape, and their inhabitants. Look out for these images if you go (and I hope that you do!), I can't recommend it highly enough. The Courtauld Gallery Cafe do a lush slice of cake too for afters!