Paul Hart. Brothertoft. Limited Edition.
Editions Available
14 x 14 inch image size on 16 x 20 inch paper, Edition of 12
17 x 17 inch image size on 20 x 24 inches paper, Edition of 8.
Artist-made, selenium toned, gelatin silver prints. Signed, titled, editioned verso in pencil.
About the work:
RECLAIMED concludes Hart’s three-part series on The Fens in England. The trilogy, which began with FARMED (Dewi Lewis 2016) and DRAINED (Dewi Lewis 2018), has received considerable critical acclaim and won a number of international awards. In 2018 Hart was awarded the inaugural Wolf Suschitzky Photography Prize (Austria/UK) and in 2019 was shortlisted for the HARIBAN Award (Japan).
The Fens is a region of low-lying marshland in the east of England, which have been artificially drained over centuries to provide some of Britain’s most fertile agricultural land. It is a landscape of agribusiness with monoculture at it’s core, defined by human migration and long-term reclamation from the sea.
Paul Hart has photographed the area for over ten years. His narrative examines the complex interrelation between humanity and nature and raises important questions about human-altered topography and our occupation and stewardship of this land.
By focusing on the often-overlooked elements in familiar vistas Hart’s aesthetics carry a documentary sensibility that allow the landscapes to define themselves.
He works solely with the analogue process employing traditional darkroom practice to convey something of the soulful in a landscape that is rarely considered of aesthetic merit.
“Paul Hart’s images of single trees function like portraits, highlighting character and nuanced individualities - with one important difference. Trees do not react like people when a camera is pointed at them. Tree ‘portraits’ depend solely on the sensibility of the photographer… His rich, dark prints capture the Stygian gloom of the dense pine forest perfectly, where trees are so close together that little light reaches their inner depths”
Gerry Badger
‘Meetings with Unremarkable Trees : The Photography of Paul Hart’.
About the photographer
British photographer Paul Hart (b. 1961) is interested in our relationship with the landscape from both a cultural and an environmental perspective. His work examines human-altered topography and our occupation and stewardship of the land, usually concentrating on one specific geographical region where he photographs intensively over a number of years.
Hart works primarily with the black and white analogue process, using large and medium format film cameras. His practice involves all aspects of the photographic process, and he is widely known for his exquisite gelatin silver prints. He has exhibited internationally and his photographs reside in major collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum, The MoMA Library Collection, Martin Parr Foundation and the Hyman Collection. In 2018/19 he received the inaugural Wolf Suschitzky Prize (UK/Austria) and was short-listed for the Mark Rothko Memorial Trust Award (Latvia) and the HARIBAN Award (Japan).
Hart has published four critically acclaimed monographs with Dewi Lewis publishing; TRUNCATED (2009) is long out of print and the Fenland Trilogy books FARMED (2016), DRAINED (2018) and RECLAIMED (2020) have been reprinted a number of times.
Paul Hart is represented in the USA by the Etherton Gallery and Joseph Bellows Gallery.
Learn more about Paul Hart.
