Personal Project Proposal

TITLE  -  Coming Home

My intention is to photographically explore the connection and relationship that I have to the landscape of my ancestral home. I have long held a desire to return to Wales, and now after over 30 years of living in England, I have been given the opportunity to do so.

Coming home is important to me in many ways; but it is the memory of family and of places visited as a child, that gives me the sense of belonging here  that I have not felt anywhere else.  Living on the coast I feel a great sense of freedom that the sea and the distant horizon evoke in me. A freedom that allows me to be the person I want to be. The land under my feet, and the land and sea that surround  and engage me, are inextricably connected to the past in the greater sense of the word, in the connection to my ancestors, and in the link to my own past.  I have a physical, emotional and spiritual association to Wales.

I will look at the theory of Phenomenology and how it informs my personal practice looking at, for example, Edward Husserl, Paul Satre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

I am writing a dissertation about Women Landscape Photographers; I feel it is appropriate as a woman with a passion for landscape photography, to research the work of other women in this field. I will look at the work of Uta Barth for her painterly style of photography and her concepts of the way we see, Roni Horn for her political views of the Thames River and other female artist photographers. In my reading I will include Liz Wells “Land Matters” and “Shifting Horizons,” Charlotte Cotton “the photograph as contemporary art” and a Thesis by Andrea Liggins on the environment (2005).

I enjoy using medium format cameras, in particular the 6x6 format as this is not a common medium for landscape photography. I don’t feel that it is necessary to depict the landscape in the conventional 10x8 form.  I also intend to use plastic cameras as I feel they may give me a more suitable apparatus to evidence the mood I want to create. This mood is of the past, it is memory and story, and may be better photographed with a dream like aesthetic.

Coming Home is intended to convey my deep connection with the land using a meditative and contemplative approach which will express my profound feelings for it.