Land

I've been looking online for a reasonably priced copy of Fay Godwin's collection Land for several months, so its arrival brightened my morning. The cover has faded in sun, but inside it's in very good condition and the photographs are beautiful. I first encountered some of them in an exhibition at the Impressions photography gallery in York, probably in 1979, on one of my early days out with P (now my husband); I didn't know photography galleries existed until then, and was thrilled to see the displays of beautifully printed black and white images and the small but wonderful collection of photography books, all beyond my budget but lovely to browse. Fay Godwin's carefully composed and wonderfully skilfully developed and printed landscapes have rich, dark shadows in which detail is still visible, sometimes dramatic skies and clouds, and lots of variation and definition in the greys. Some are beautiful, some are powerful images of damaged places, some are intimate and detailed. I was reminded of the York exhibition when Fay Godwin was included in a BBC documentary series a few years ago on the history of photography in Britain, and when last autumn I was asked "Who inspires you?" for a camera club project, I chose to focus on her documentation of issues surrounding footpaths and access to land in Our Forbidden Land, published in the 1980s when she was president of the Ramblers' Association (which I blipped about here). Since then, I've been consciously photographing the footpaths close to home where I walk again and again, and trying improve my rather rudimentary black and white editing, to create a collection reflecting my interaction with the environment in which I've spent most of my days for the past few years.