Cavern Cascade

The picturesque remains a derided form in contemporary art. In my current practice I stage a return of the genre, whilst critically reflecting upon its constitutive elements. In ‘Cavern Cascade’, for example, there is a fidelity to picturesque forms, as it was taken at a sanctioned viewpoint (Haford, Wales), is of a ‘picturesque’ subject, and appeals to ‘the sublime’. Despite this, I have utilised a ‘closed’ frame in which flattened distances result in a claustrophobic and almost abstract image. Such tensions can be read in my use of pin-hole. The time it takes to use this technology means that, like original picturesque artists, I take a plein air approach, yet there are uncontrollable elements within the process, and the results are not necessarily pretty or tame. Digitisation allow this visual rawness to be magnified, even as it challenges emerging appeals to ‘natural representation’, as well as opening up the image to a structure of commodification and exchange. This concern with economics reflects my interest in the picturesque’s politics, its concern with property and public access. In other photographs in this series, I explore how such ideas are negotiated by the modern tourist industry, and through the commercialisation of landscape.