Nicholas Hughes
13 Sep - 03 Nov 2007
NICHOLAS HUGHES
"In Darkness Visible"
In Darkness Visible is a new body of work that re-examines the traditional symbols and metaphors used in photography in order to portray the human sense of wonder before nature. In keeping with the themes of his previous series Edge, Hughes seeks to illustrate the frail residue of the contemporary wilderness and our relationship to it.
Concerned with topical ecological matters, Nicholas Hughes feels that environmental awareness has heightened our sensibility towards the beautiful and sublime in local nature. As our habitat changes, and with that our perception of the habitat, it no longer seems necessary to cross the globe in search of the new, the exotic and the undiscovered. Instead it is the seemingly brand new world on our doorstep that demands exploration and contemplation.
In Darkness Visible, Verse I
Forests constructed from memory and the ‘ghosts of trees’ emerge slowly from this brooding series. Experimenting with traditional forms of analogue photography rather than employing digital methods, Hughes spent a period of two winters visiting public spaces in central London and has produced each photograph with deliberate ambivalence to its exact source. The photographs invert conventional observations of landscape in an attempt to restore a sense of the natural in the cultivated, synthetic city environment.
In Darkness Visible, Verse II
These mesmerizing swirls of turbulent seas appear to glow from within and are part inspired by the paintings of the British Romantic painter J.M.W. Turner and to what he referred to as “the weather in our souls”. This search for emblematic last points of light within ensuing darkness involved long periods of contemplation on the complexities of nature from a familiar vantage point.
"In Darkness Visible"
In Darkness Visible is a new body of work that re-examines the traditional symbols and metaphors used in photography in order to portray the human sense of wonder before nature. In keeping with the themes of his previous series Edge, Hughes seeks to illustrate the frail residue of the contemporary wilderness and our relationship to it.
Concerned with topical ecological matters, Nicholas Hughes feels that environmental awareness has heightened our sensibility towards the beautiful and sublime in local nature. As our habitat changes, and with that our perception of the habitat, it no longer seems necessary to cross the globe in search of the new, the exotic and the undiscovered. Instead it is the seemingly brand new world on our doorstep that demands exploration and contemplation.
In Darkness Visible, Verse I
Forests constructed from memory and the ‘ghosts of trees’ emerge slowly from this brooding series. Experimenting with traditional forms of analogue photography rather than employing digital methods, Hughes spent a period of two winters visiting public spaces in central London and has produced each photograph with deliberate ambivalence to its exact source. The photographs invert conventional observations of landscape in an attempt to restore a sense of the natural in the cultivated, synthetic city environment.
In Darkness Visible, Verse II
These mesmerizing swirls of turbulent seas appear to glow from within and are part inspired by the paintings of the British Romantic painter J.M.W. Turner and to what he referred to as “the weather in our souls”. This search for emblematic last points of light within ensuing darkness involved long periods of contemplation on the complexities of nature from a familiar vantage point.