Photography exhibition nominated for award
Clouds Descending exhibition nominated for
prestigious photographic prize
JEM SOUTHAM
Clouds Descending at The Lowry
Until Sun 22 March 2009
Jem Southam’s exhibition, Clouds Descending, which only shows at The Lowry for another two weeks, has been nominated for the Prix Pictet 2009 Photography Prize, the world’s premier photographic award in sustainability.
Launched today, the Prix Pictet 2009 Photography Prize involves over seventy nominators from six continents searching for the image that will have the power and artistic quality to convey this year’s theme of ‘earth’. Earth in this context refers not only to the planet and the soil beneath our feet, but also to the marks that man makes on the face of the land - either directly by creating mines, toxic waste, vast refused dumps and blasted desert landscapes. Although the 2009 shortlist won’t be announced until July, the only opportunity to see Clouds Descending at The Lowry is by visiting the galleries before the exhibition finishes on Sunday 22 March.
Commissioned by The Lowry, Jem Southam, leading landscape photographer 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.
Jem commented, “It’s great to be nominated, the Prix Pictet is a huge event, tens of thousands attend the exhibition accompanying the prize and work from all those nominated is given a large digital display. So the Cumbrian coast will get some fine international exposure!”
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.
Renowned for photographing the ever changing aspects of the English landscape, Jem uses a large format camera to produce C-type prints from 8 x 10 inch negatives that record a high level of detail. When the pictures are enlarged from the negatives, under supervision at a commercial lab, they reveal an entrancing wealth of information. Others are 'contact printed' (placing the negative directly onto the photographic paper) by Southam himself, deliberately to achieve a contrasting intensity and intimacy.
Due to Jem’s intensive working method, Southam rarely accepts commissions and has almost exclusively focused on the landscape of the South West of England where he lives and works. Jem is Professor of Photography at the University of Plymouth. However, The Lowry managed to interest Southam in producing this new body of work examining the industrial landscape along the North West coast. This unique exhibition initiated by The Lowry involved commissioning Jem Southam especially for this project which started in 2006. This exhibition is supported by Gulbenkian.
Jem took various contributors in a range of different specialist fields on walks with him to the sites that he photographed and asked them to respond to the place. These responses will be shown in the exhibition and 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.
Clouds Descending tours to Carlisle this Winter, showing at the Tullie House Museum & Art Gallery from 12 December 2009 - 28 February 2010.
Posted on Monday, 09 March 2009 under News Galleries Press