Venice, as seen from the edge of the Zattere. © Eddie Ephraums
Eddie Ephraums
Thinking about the word ‘environment’ makes me look at my landscape photography in a more considered way. It makes me question if I sit (too comfortably?) on a generic ‘landscape photographer’ fence. I ask myself if I could be clearer, about where I position my photography in relation to the environment I inhabit? Could I engage more consciously with it and be more focussed in my approach – as a documentary, or environmental, or artistic, or other type of photographer?
Thinking about the forthcoming Photography and the Environment workshop:
I want to explore and positively challenge our approach to photographing the landscape/environment we inhabit:
to be clear(er) about what type of photographs we want to make and to ask ourselves why?
to be (even more) focussed in the way we make these pictures and in how we wish to present them
to think about the purpose our images might serve and the way we might usefully use them – as we should with any genre of photography. (Ian Macilwain’s OSW blog-piece Under My Very Nose is a great example.)
Adrian and I have always tried to apply this type of constructive questioning to all our OSW workshops. In this sense we see ourselves as facilitators, rather than traditional workshop educators, especially with a subject that is as fast changing and personal to each of us as the environment. In trying to help inform and inspire everyone’s thinking, we also like to bring in people with a wealth of local experience and professional expertise to speak with the group. We have three different specialists coming to talk with us on the environment workshop.
Through this workshop, and through Caroline Tollyfield’s and Sandy Wotton’s Photography and the Environment blog piece, we hope to creatively stimulate and positively challenge the way we all make photographs of the world we inhabit. We also hope to help define (or even redefine) the position we take as photographers within it.
Some personal thoughts on photography and the environment:
One aspect of my photographic practice is to make images that both celebrate and challenge my notion of beauty. I’ve included the above picture as an example of this.
On the surface, the image is not dissimilar to the Nike trainer picture I made on the Photography and the Environment workshop description page. It was shot on the beach just below the Open Studio Workshop centre. A difference with the above image is that it wasn’t made on the local Wester Ross water’s edge but on the Zattere – in Venice. Yet both images share a similar photographic concern and in both cases I tried to make them look strangely beautiful, to hold the viewer’s attention.
In both of these picture scenarios I could have focussed my lens on more obviously pleasing and arguably less challenging subject matter. Would there be anything wrong with this? I could also have made more photographs of rubbish. There was plenty of it at both locations. On the Zattere I could even have focussed my lens on the cruise ship that had crashed into the quayside a couple of hundred metres away, to make pictures that spoke about another environmental issue that challenges the city and its inhabitants.
But there is a limit to how many ‘negative’ images of the environment I wish to make, or which others want to see, before we all reach overload and switch off. Better perhaps to make one or two hopefully thought provoking images at the water’s edge, that positively challenge our relationship with it, than a whole raft of negative ones.
On that final point, I notice the Guardian newspaper has recently revised its environmental picture policy. You might be interested to read it: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/18/guardian-climate-pledge-2019-images-pictures-guidelines
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