Richard Billingham

Bought Richard Billingham's book "Landscapes 2001 - 2003".  I first looked at all the images without reading the introductory essay as I find that being 'told' by someone else what they see in the images impacts upon my impressions. There is an inevitable conflict between what I see and what the writer sees that I find necessary to try to resolve.

My first impression was not positive largely because I was hearing the 'judge's voice' in my head that is probably the outcome of attending too many competitions. I found myself thinking "I would have cropped the sky out because it adds nothing to the overall image" or "It is too fussy there is no 'centre' to the image" and similar phrases so favoured by judges. Recognising the problem I re-visited the images consciously trying to see the whole and the way that the elements combined to produce the overall impact. Although in one or two cases there still remained the questions ( Hollybush 2001 and Hedge 2001 are examples) I found myself having a greater appreciation of the whole image.

The 'flat' landscape is one that I know well living in East Anglia close to the Cambridgeshire Fens and the Norfolk countryside so that the cover image Gates 2002 and Pond 2002 are types of landscape I have photographed often. There is always the the need to resolve the problem of the amount of land and sky in the image, the latter being a dominant element in the flat landscapes of East Anglia. Including the sky can emphasise the 'emptiness' of the area but also can be 'dead space' such as the sky in "Dyke 2003" where it is a featureless mass that occupies almost half of the image and does not, for me, add anything to the image.

The images I had the least liking for were the intimate landscapes such as "Sunflowers 2001", "Tree Boles 2001" and "HollyBush 2001".  I found myself having no emotional response to them and wondered why they had been included.

What will I take away from this book. Certainly an appreciation of another person's approach to a subject that is one of my favourites in photography. There are some images that I would not have dreamed of taking (Storm at Sea 2001) previously that I would now attempt. Perhaps I will also be braver in breaking the rules that I seem to have imbibed by osmosis rather than consciously such as the presence of the sky and other elements. It will be interesting to review my work in a few months time to see what impact my knowledge of this book has had on my approach.