THE NATURE OF PLACE | Joseph Wright

“…innocence of eye has a quality of its own. It means to see as a child sees, with freshness and acknowledgment of the wonder; it also means to see as an adult sees who has gone full circle and once again sees as a child – with freshness and an even deeper sense of wonder.” – Minor White

This work is unfinished, perhaps an unusual move to show this work but that’s quite deliberate. Not the deliberate act of showing unfinished work though but the fact the work is unfinished; that’s intentional. Not only that, it is a small collection of a much larger body of work, from early work and also some of my most recent, neither is it a random collection of disparate work.

Indeed there is a lot more of the ‘un’ prefix to this project too; not only unfinished but also unhurried and unceasing. Although I like to think not unintentional, unadventurous or unachievable in its intent and realisation. This is the way it’s meant to be, a developmental project without end – does that no longer make it a project I wonder? Does everything have to have an end to be complete? Can we not just enjoy the journey, the discovery and development without a pressure to finish something, is not what we learn and experience also completion?

This is a foundational piece. It has a loose construct that allows me to explore a lifelong fascination for the land, especially woodlands and such like and, how these places are responding post the trace of human activity. These are environments re-wilding where the omnipresent hand of man and their memory lessens to the point we believe man was never there. This is a new nature of place, a reflection of our culture, for an antecedent anthropogenic nature form will not exist again – it can’t, everything now has the permanent indelible trace of man.

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“I have often photographed when I am not in tune with nature but the photographs look as if I had been. So I conclude that something in nature says, ‘Come and take my photograph.’ So I do, regardless of how I feel.” – Minor White

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These places also challenge by virtue of the fact they are environments for which I have an extensive memory bank; utterly familiar but new at the same time. They provide an opportunity to learn to see again, to look past the familiar; “to look at and see within”. The longevity of the work also allows me to build an intimate understanding, beyond the initial fascination of aesthetic, through the ebb and flow of life and states of mind – like the most successful of relationships.

In these places I have freedom to actively explore tangential paths without bounds, some dead ends others bear fruit – it’s a melting pot of intrinsically interconnected thoughts; linked by both the land itself but ultimately through me as the photographer. Isn’t this the same for all of us though, regardless of the subjects we choose, doesn’t all the work we make not link to create a reflection of our true self? It was from this work The Floods was born, The Lost Forest was first germinated from a seed in my mind and at least two more now complete. It’s work I’ll always return to, driven by the fascination of subject and an overwhelming desire to explore and create. What is your true fascination, is it what you’re working on now?