An Evening with Jem Southam
Leading photographer talks about his work in The Lowry galleries
An Evening with Jem Southam
Fri 6 February, 6.30pm
Clouds Descending
Exhibition continues until Sun 22 March 2009
Jem Southam, one of the country's leading landscape photographers, will deliver a unique lecture in the surroundings of his exhibition, Clouds Descending at The Lowry next week (Fri 6 February). He will give a brief introduction to his work and explain the extraordinary lengths to which he goes to achieve such stunning photographs.
David Evans in Source magazine describes Jem’s way of working, “For his epic theme, Southam adopts appropriate, time-consuming working methods. There is extensive preparatory research, including the study of weather forecasts. There is walking and waiting, frequently on difficult terrain. Bulky equipment is often being carried around, especially a Wista, a modern Japanese version of a Victorian plate camera. Southam only photographs on still grey days, sometimes producing just a few images in a year. The end results are crafted objects, recalling the work of 19th Century pioneers like Carleton Watkins who took along a wagon laboratory pulled by a dozen mules... Southam’s achievement is to create work informed by past and present that has conviction... [He is] the photographer of the slow rhythms of social time and the even slower rhythms of physical geography.”
Commissioned by The Lowry, Jem Southam re-traced Lowry's footsteps along the Cumbrian coastline, resulting in a remarkable series of images, focusing on the remnants of the area’s long and significant industrial past. Like LS Lowry, Jem observed and recorded the industrial landscapes and harbour towns of this area, in particular Maryport, Whitehaven, Workington, Sellafield and Barrow. His trademark patient observation of changes over many months or years, means that he slowly develops an intimate knowledge of the site, capturing the marks of time (both industrial and natural) embedded in his chosen terrain.
Jem took various contributors in a range of different specialist fields on walks with him to the sites that he has been photographing and asked them to make a response to the place which will also be shown in the exhibition. These include Lindsay Brooks, an expert on LS Lowry and Richard Hamblyn - a popular science writer who is interested in geology and place and author of The Invention of Clouds and The Cloud Book. Nick Alfrey, an art historian who works closely with cultural geographers shared with Jem his intimate knowledge of how artists have informed our understanding of the landscape. Other contributors are Harriet Tarlo, a contemporary poet who is interested in landscape and environment and David Chandler, curator and critic. Jem also walked with his brother Matt Southam, an ornithologist, to gain further insights into the area.
The walks and conversations with this range of contributors all helped to inform Jem's work as he observes the balance between nature and man's intervention, tracing cycles of decay and renewal. Southam's working method means that he combines topographical observation with other references: personal, cultural, political, scientific, literary and psychological.
There is also the opportunity to take part in an all-day Masterclass with Jem at The Lowry on Saturday 7th February - full application details are available from redeyesubmissions@googlemail.com.
Clouds Descending is one of two unique photography exhibitions showing at The Lowry this Spring. A Long Exposure: 100 Years of Guardian Photography (until 1 Mar 09) celebrates some of the most memorable picture stories from the newspaper’s seven staff photographers since 1908.
Posted on Thursday, 29 January 2009 under Press Galleries Press