1. Exhibition for the Moormuseum, Emsland 2. Artists’ statements
3. Featured Retreat:
Elbe Sandstone Mountains, Germany
4 Chez-nous and still life photography
5. Bonus footage
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Hello there
Niall: I sometimes wonder, nowadays, how many of us get the opportunity to experience real, profound silence silence, that is, free of any sounds created by people. (I am, with respect, discounting those who are unable to hear, in this thought). I’ve known deep silence while lying out on Scottish mountain tops, staring up into the sky while keeping company with arctic-alpine treasures like Diapensia lapponica and Lychnis viscaria. And at the lonely northern end of the Isle of Jura amongst browning bracken rustling with red deer and ticks. Generally, though, I think most of us actively seek to fill that silence lest we encounter ghosts we would rather not or be serenaded by doubts we daren’t succumb to. Charlotte fills her silence with happy music (and, to my credit, Dead Can Dance - which is quite an achievement). I am a compulsive podcast listener. Most of the time, silence feels like too-narrow an arête to pick our way along.
And yet…and yet I also know that an empty lake of silence, with our thoughts unmoored and drifting through the fog, is a place of intrigue and surprise once we are clear of the hazardous shoals. That, now and again, it is worth taking the risk and just casting off from the sounds that make us feel safe. Just to see what happens.
Charlotte: if you know any of the Radio 4 Today producers, tell them Niall’s ready for Thought for the Day.
Our best wishes
Charlotte and Niall
PS: Niall is always interested to hear podcast recommendations (of History Hit standard) with an arts or environment angle. Please send!
Exhibition for the Moormuseum, Emsland
Charlotte: After all these years…Niall has finally been offered a proper exhibition of the field studio work he has been doing since 2007. The commission began almost two years ago at the Moormuseum, Emsland in the far north west of Germany when, during two visits, he gathered the pictures. Now, with funding secured for a 40 print exhibition, he has been busy creating the designs that illustrate the biological communities - and star species - in the bog, mires and moors around the Moormuseum. These will be printed on one metre wide di-bond media for the last exhibition to open before the Museum’s director, Dr Michael Haverkamp, retires. We are very grateful for this opportunity, not only for Niall to create the work, but to have it shown in a great venue, too. The exhibition is scheduled to open on Sunday 13th April. Here’s how to find the Moormuseum, just in case you can come along.
Niall: Like a book project, you can never have too many pictures to draw upon for an enterprise like this. Indeed, I have dug deeply into my own archive to supplement those I gathered during the two shoots. I was helped hugely by the entomologists who found and named the specimens I was photographing on set. And I have to say, I needed help with some of the mosses, too.
I used Affinity Publisher for the project (hopping over to Photo now and again to use its brushes to erase the ends of stems) - a much happier experience than Photoshop. Top tip: while Darker Colour blending mode is the one of choice when compositing white background images in PS, Darken, in Publisher, produces a more natural rendering, especially with a tinted background. This is especially evident in the wings of the dragonflies, which are notoriously hard to render well in the field studio.
Biologists amongst you may be rolling your eyes as you note the scaling in these images- things are certainly not in proportion to each other. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, my brief was to provide visually-engaging representations of (largely) natural communities in Emsland. If I try to show a royal fern and common frog in proportion to each other (below) the frog is going to be very small indeed. My goal is to reflect the natural equilibrium that exists between the species shown in a piece by creating compositions which, themselves, are balanced. For me, scale is less important than connection. These works are illustrative rather than simple documentary.
Unless I am doing a project where there are clearly defined objectives, the process of gathering elements to create a finished work later (such as field studio composites or Chocolate Bars), is a much less pressurised, more enjoyable process. I highly recommended it if you are struggling the achieve a “perfect capture” every time you go out. You never know when those random pictures you’ve been collecting will come together into something beautiful.
Artists’ statements
Niall: I think that some artists should not be let loose on a keyboard to describe their work. Curator George Vasey tells us that, “A great artist’s statement paints a concise, unexpected, and vivid picture of an artist’s body of work. It introduces the practice and orientates the reader with key concepts. A good piece of writing is like making tasty soup; don’t throw endless herbs onto burnt onions. Get the basics right and build from there.” Sadly, as exponents of International Art English demonstrate, too many statements are made with the hob ring set at 9 and cooked until everything has an unpleasant burnt taste. Move a-way from the keyboard, for the sake of your reputation, if nothing else.
I fully appreciate that many, perhaps most, readers of MENUette don’t aspire to be working artists. Nevertheless, I think there is real benefit to be had from coming up with a statement for your own photography, even if that is just to acknowledge your preoccupations are documentary rather than artistic, per se. There’s no shame in that. But if your practice is underpinned by ideas, if your methods are proactive, then trying to describe what the work is about is helpful. It helps the viewer by providing a context as they look at your pictures and it helps to clarify in your mind what you are trying to achieve. Ever unafraid to expose myself to ridicule/ lead by example, here is mine:
There are two things I would like to tell you:
1. I do not use generative artificial intelligence in the creation of my images. Instead, I go out into the world with a camera. When did “artificial” stop being a dirty word?
2. A lot of my photography over the years has been done to satisfy clients. It certainly isn’t art. Other work looks like art because of the way it has been executed. But without a context, it’s just decoration. The more substantial stuff, when it comes down to it, tends to coalesce around one recurring theme: singularity. It’s all about the individuality of things. You see it in my field studio images where the subject is treated as a character rather than a member of a species or “type”. And again in Chocolate Bars that present diversity where people assume uniformity. It’s in Deconstructed Landscapes that shift the emphasis from the appearance of the landscape to the elements that comprise it. And it’s in my Colour Transects where the colours that comprise the image are drawn out and presented separately.
This approach reflects my loathing of the slovenly-thinking that tends to aggregate and judge collectively rather than acknowledge endless individuality. It's a dangerous, reductive way to regard the world and we don't need to look far in the political arena to see the consequences of labels. But if you want to put a label on me, “Anti-Aggregationist” would be a good fit. Just don’t expect your spell-checker to recognise it.
So there.
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Following our first visit to this fascinating corner in the far east of Germany two years ago, we will be returning this autumn. Two spaces remain!
Follow in the footsteps of Casper David Friedrich, poster-boy of German Romanticism!
The Elbe Sandstone Mountains, straddling the border of Germany and Czechia (part of which is confusingly known as Saxon Switzerland) lie close to Dresden in what was once East Germany. There is no-where else in central Europe that matches the variety of landforms in so compact an area, from table mountains, to
deep, wooded ravines, curiously eroded rock pillars to wild outcrops and crags. No wonder it was a favourite region of the celebrated German Romantic Period painter, Caspar David Friedrich. In its strangeness he found the perfect setting in which to create his haunting work. In more recent times, the makers of The Chronicles of Narnia also succumbed to its other-worldly charms to film some scenes. And we have a great base for providing you with the sort of hospitality you’ve come to expect on a Retreat with us. Even with en-suite bathrooms: we know you love them.
Some of the locations we plan to visit include:
Bastei. One of the region’s most famous viewpoints both towards and from the bridge (cover)
Liebethaler Grund. A deep wooded gorge with abandoned 19th century hydro electric scheme
Little Goose rock
Papststein
Lilienstein. A table mountain overlooking the Elbe
Hohnstein. A picturesque old village with hill-top castle
Pfaffenstein. Some of the most impressive rock towers
Dresden. We may make a dusk visit to photograph this former seat of the kings of Saxony
Locations just over the border in Czechia, including Europe’s largest natural sandstone arch, Pravčická brána
Chez-nous Retreats, as you may know by now, take place at our home in Burgundy, allowing us to deploy all our resources to teach you new skills, introduce you to new photographic experiences and provide you with a lot of rather nice food in a comfortable, relaxing setting. And it’s just for two photographers at a time.
Of the the many advantages of this sort of Retreat is that you call the shots with regards to what you would like to work on and from this we devise a programme to advance you in that field.
Something we have not pushed so much until now is how we can work with you to develop your food photography (and other still-life) skills, focusing on these these three main areas (these images come from a magazine pitch):
If you want a new creative challenge, food photography is a great starting point, with skills transferrable to other fields of photography such as still life and product photography.
If you’re weary of taking the same old photos, this might be just the tonic to restore your “mo-pho” (motivation to photograph). And even if food photography isn’t your thing, you may be able to earn a commission by suggesting it to someone whose it is!
Bonus footage
Skipper Babbs
Niall: One of the many advantages of being a man is that as we age, greying hair, creases and lines tend to be viewed without judgement (by other men, at least). Indeed, signs of senescence are considered as “characterful”. This is not news to you, ladies.
I made this portrait of Pete Babbs at St Cyrus in the east of Scotland late in the 1990’s with a Hasseblad Xpan, not long after I had fallen in love with the work of Phil Borges. I was especially enchanted by how he mixed studio flash with daylight and I bought an old Norman 400B and metre-square softbox soon after I first saw it. For me, it remains the most magical form of lighting for portraiture. But it’s not everyday I get to photograph such a characterful face as Pete’s.
We’re off today to our first Retreat of the year, based on the Isle of Harris. Charlotte has been menu planning, shopping for French specialities to take with us and making sure she knows everyone’s food needs. Keep your fingers crossed for us, please, for easy ferry crossings! Watch out for picture in the next MENUette.
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Many thanks,
Our best wishes, Charlotte and Niall
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