Exhibition: Jem Southam
Jem Southam
Bringing the Outside In
Jun – Sept 2009
St Barts Gallery, West Smithfield
Jem Southam is one of Britain’s foremost landscape photographers, and Vital Arts is particularly excited about this rare opportunity to show his work in London. Often producing series through repeated visits to sites over time, Southam’s prevailing thematic concerns are the changes, large and small, occurring within the British countryside. He has said that he proposes “histories,” both social and natural. The pictures exhibited in this exhibition are from two series taken at small ponds in rural settings. While each photograph is a study of a specific time on a particular day, together they follow the transformations and changes wrought by natural and human agencies over many years.
Jem Southam was born in Bristol in 1950. He currently resides with his family in Exeter and is Professor of Photography at the University of Plymouth . He is a member of the ‘Land/Water and the Visual Arts’ Research Group.
Renowned critic Richard Cork will be conversation with the Southam and Jochen Klein, who has a concurrent exhibition at the RLH Gallery, at Barts on Tuesday 16th June, exploring their personal approaches to landscape, and the impact of such images in a hospital setting.
Jem Southam, The Pond At Upton Pyne, July 1996, Chromogenic dye coupler print on Sintra mount. 24.4 x 19.3 cm
