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Fay Godwin – landscape influences
I love the work of Fay Godwin. The use of black and white creates interesting and striking compositions – often geometric with dramatic skies.
One of her best known works is ‘Land’ – a collection of photographs from her first 10 years work as a landscape photographer. The photographs depict the British countryside – they are striking images that use the drama of cloud formations and light. Many of her images are in square format. The compositions are a celebration of the beauty of the wilds/countryside.
In ‘Our Forbidden Land’, she has changed tack. The photographs are a documentary depicting man’s adverse influence on the landscape - large roads cut into beautiful mountains, unattractive buildings and telegraph posts obscure the views, fences block the way, and forestry work spoils the landscape. Godwin was a long time member and President of the Ramblers Association and was active in the contemporary campaigns to keep the countryside open. ‘Our Forbidden Land’ makes a strong case for a more sensitive approach to the landscape.
I find her work inspiring. It makes me want to set off to wild countryside in search of images. It has also made me aware of the importance of cloud formations and the play of light in capturing a successful image – timing is important in this respect. Dramatic weather conditions can help to create strong images. It is interesting also to note how a landscape photographer can make a social comment.
Fay Godwin - BIOGRAPHY
Fay Godwin is famed as much for her creative interpretations of the landscape as for her campaigning to conserve it. Her work ranged from atmospheric studies of prehistoric sites to images of refuse-strewn and polluted rivers. It is a celebration of the British countryside, a lament for what has been lost and a warning about what will happen if action is not taken to preserve it.
Godwin didn't start taking photographs until she was in her mid-30s, while married to Tony Godwin, then editor-in-chief of Penguin Books. She began by shooting snapshots of her two young children and soon discovered a great passion for photography. She taught herself to develop and print, and after she and her husband separated in 1969, she decided to become a professional photographer.
Through her publishing connections she began photographing writers, primarily for use as publicity material. She photographed many major literary figures in Britain at the time, including Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin, Seamus Heaney and Doris Lessing. Shot in natural light and often using the writers' homes as their background, these images are understated and perceptive portraits.
Godwin became ill around 1976 and the direction of her work began to change. 'After being ill, I concentrated more on the landscape. In a sense, all the natural things became incredibly important,' she said in an interview for ITV's The South Bank Show in 1986.
Her first book, The Oldest Road: An Exploration of the Ridgeway (1975), co-
authored with John Richard Lane Anderson, featured the landscapes of the North Wessex Downs and the Chilterns, often focusing on ancient features in the landscape, such as the Neolithic stone circles at Avebury and the prehistoric White Horse at Uffington.
In 1978 she received a major award from the Arts Council of Great Britain, which allowed her to continue and develop her landscape photography. More books followed, including Remains of Elmet (1979), which she co-authored with poet Ted Hughes. This book, with its often dark and dramatic interpretations of the Pennine landscape, was especially important in establishing her reputation.
Paved path above Lumbutts, near Todmorden, West Yorkshire (from Remains of Elmet, 1979) © COLLECTIONS, LONDON
Godwin disliked purely picturesque views of the landscape and her work was never sentimental. 'I've been called a Romantic photographer and I hate it,' she said. 'It sounds slushy and my work is not slushy. I'm a documentary photographer, my work is about reality, but that shouldn't mean I can't be creative.'
During this period she worked in black & white, using medium-format equipment, and her images were noted for their clarity, careful composition and expert control over tonal values. She was known for great tenacity and determination when creating an image. When someone once remarked to her that she had been lucky to catch the ideal cloud formations in a particular picture she quickly replied, 'I didn't “catch” it. I sat down and waited three days for it.'
Her book ‘Land’, published in 1985, was the summation of her work in that period. It was a critical and commercial success. It showed Britain as a place of standing stones, ruined castles and industrial relics, a mysterious land of breathtaking vistas, moody skies and sometimes desolate and threatening landscapes.
However, Godwin was also determined to show how the British countryside was changing for the worse. This aspect of her work came to the fore in her next book, ‘Our Forbidden Land’ (1990). It showed how large areas of countryside were being torn up for development, how pollution was affecting rivers and forests, and the ways in which public rights of access to land was being denied by landowners.
Godwin's work was changing in other ways as she looked for new challenges. After being awarded a Fellowship of the National Museum of Photography in 1986, she spent a year working on a series of colour industrial landscapes, shot in and around Bradford, West Yorkshire.
This work was later followed by a series of colour abstract images focusing on shape, texture and form in still-life setups of foliage. Godwin was unable to find a publisher for the latter project and it was eventually privately published under the title Glassworks & Secret Lives (1998).
'Leaping Lurcher' (from Rebecca the Lurcher, 1973) © COLLECTIONS, LONDON
By this time, Godwin was unable to walk distances due to what she described as 'NHS drugs with adverse effects that wrecked my heart.' She sold her darkroom equipment and enthusiastically adopted digital photography. However, after one final book, the career retrospective Landmark (2001) and the accompanying major exhibition at London's Barbican Gallery, her health declined further. She died in 2005.
Godwin's exceptional body of work, her outspoken personality and her genuine concern for the environment made her a unique figure in British photography. Her unpretentious attitude to photography and her devotion to the landscape
are captured in this quote from one of her final interviews, with journalist David Corfield in 2004:
'I don't get wrapped up in technique and the like,' she said. 'I have a simple rule and that is to spend as much time in the location as possible. You can't expect to take a definitive image in half an hour. It takes days, often years. And in fact I don't believe there is such a thing as a definitive picture of something. The land is a living, breathing thing and light changes its character every second of every day. That's why I love it so much.'
A short Biography
Godwin became interested in photography through photographing her young children. No training. 1975 Publication of first co-author book, The Oldest Road, with writer J.R.L.
Anderson. Exhibitions from the series toured nationally. 1978 Recipient of major award from Arts Council of Great Britain to continue
landscape work in British Isles, much of which is included in Land. 1984 Start of British Councils overseas tour of Landscape Photographs. 1985 Publication of Land. Major exhibition of Land at the Serpentine Gallery,
London. 1986 South Bank Show their first full-length documentary to feature a photographer. 1986/7 Fellow at the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, Bradford. 1987/90 President of the Ramblers' Association, UK. Then life vice president. 1990 Awarded Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society. 1990 six week lecture and workshop tour of New Zealand. 1992 Awarded Honorary Fellowship by the Royal Incorporation of Architects in
Scotland. 1995 Award from Northern Arts for the Year of the Visual Arts, and from the Erna
and Victor Hasselblad Foundation to work on the contribution of small farmers to the character of the Cumbrian landscape.
Major retrospective at the Barbican Centre in London 2001, with accompanying publication,
Honorary Doctotorate of Arts at De Montfort University, 2002. Died, May 2005 aged 74.
Beautiful Landscapes
Above: Fay Godwin ‘No Man’s Land
I like the way the light has caught the grasses as well as the contrast in the sky/clouds. The silhouetted building and trees add interest.
Above: Fay Godwin – No man’s land
The composition has been divided into thirds – there is wonderful contrast in the sky/clouds and I like the way the stones lead the eye into the distant landscape.
Godwin’s black and white landscapes are haunting and brooding in the main. Printed dark and with lots of contrast, she has practically never once cropped her negatives, choosing to construct her images purely through the groundglass screen of her Hasselblad.
Influenced by Bill Brandt and Paul Strand, she looks for the narrative in her landscapes, choosing to record man’s relationship with the environment. She’s made it her niche.
“I’ve always been interested in our relationship with the land. There is so much of great beauty and historical interest, but when I look at the British Isles I am also angered and saddened by the relentless butchering of our heritage by money-grabbing corporations.
“After Land I wanted to continue exploring the theme but I needed a new challenge so turned to colour. I explored Bradford and produced a series of urban landscapes that I liked, but because Land had made such an impact on the general public my colour work wasn’t reviewed. Maybe black and white is the best medium for landscapes, I don’t know. I’m not faithful to one particular medium, and it’s what I try to teach to people who work with me.”
Great composition – the dark clouds contrast with the light streaming from the horizon and harmonise with the dark trees at the end of the field in the foreground. The horizontal of the field in the foreground constrasts well with the opposing diagonal of the horizon
Wow!! I love the striations on the middle field, the imposing white cloud that dominates the sky, the diagonal pattern of the strips of the field in the foreground and the dark tree off to the left on the horizon. The composition has been divided into thirds.
A great composition. Striking lines/contours in this field stretching into the distance.
Images depicting Man’s Adverse Influence on the Landscape
An image depicting the spoiling of the landscape.
