From Publishers Weekly
Insisting that "a landscape is never innocent," Andy Grundberg's introductory essay for this hefty book captures perfectly the suspicious yet oddly playful mood of this atmospheric collection. British photographer Southam's thought-provoking works relay their own stories and attest to his following in the footsteps of early 20th century British landscape photographer Peter Henry Emerson, whose work is known for standing "in opposition to the industrialization and urbanization that were then transforming the economic and social fabric of life." While much of Southam's work is also preoccupied with its own wink-wink brand of social commentary-evidenced by photos of abandoned mine shafts and confined songbird cages in a zoo-he has an eye fine-tuned to the nuances of country life's quietude: a photograph of recently cracked eggs, their orange yolks exposed for judging at a poultry show, is intriguing, while gentle studies of verdant barnyard scenes shot over a series of months chart the landscape's evolution. Particularly interested in areas once dominated by industry that have since been abandoned, Southam captures the scarred countryside's slow return to nature.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Stride Magazine
"The photos are, let's not mince words, beautiful: things to gaze and wonder at, full of detail and texture."
