Northern Light Contemporary Landscape Photography exhibition

Northern Light Contemporary Landscape Photography exhibition This exhibition (linked to the Northern Light: Landscape Photography and Evocations of the North conference) explored the ways that photographic images address notions of a Northern landscape – whether drawing on established traditions of art and photography or concerned with contemporary photographic and lens based practice. In an open submission process, proposals were invited for recent work responding to Northern Landscapes. Diverse approaches were welcome ranging from documentary to experimental. The exhibition curated by Michele Lazenby includes work made in Scandinavia, North America, Northern Britain, Russia and the Ukraine by a mixture of established and emerging international practitioners. Visitors to the gallery harboring preconceptions regarding Landscape photography would hopefully be surprised by the diversity of approaches. There was little evidence of the traditional long view or vista that the lay person might associate with Landscape Photography. Instead, there were reflections on the complex nature of Nature as well as on Photography itself as a way of seeing and recording (Matthew Conduit and Anna Lilleengen). The exhibition did include some documents and narratives: of death in UK beauty spots (Henry Iddon), of female sheep farmers in Scotland (Sophie Gerrard), Simon Roberts' atmospheric images of a frozen Russia and Sabine Dundure's evocative slideshow Tairovo showing scenes from a suburb in the Ukrainian city of Odessa. Then, in another strand of the exhibition there was a sense of immersing oneself in highly subjective experience: Liza Dracup's Sharpe's Wood vibrant photographs of night time woodland suggest something beyond the trees. Particularly refreshing is the experimental, installation work by Jacqueline Butler and Alexandra Hughes where each push against conventions and boundaries within the genre in their own distinctive way, exploring the expanded field. A catalogue publication designed by Andrew Robinson representing the exhibition is forthcoming.