Samuel Bradley

I am a photographer on the verge of graduating. Currently interning at www.mackbooks.co.uk.

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  CLARE RICHARDSON

  I wanted to start occasionally talking about other photographers on my blog, people I think you should go and look at. Here’s one.

  

   I recently got a copy of Clare Richardson’s book ‘Beyond The Forest’, published by ‘Steidl.’ First things first, If you haven’t heard of Steidl and you love photography then you’re crazy. Go and check them out. They are responsible for publishing some of the best books on photography, well… ever.

   Anyway, this series by Clare Richardson is fantastic, and the book is beautifully presented. Not as well made as a lot of stuff from Steidl, but still good, with a subtle cover embossing and spot on printing inside.

  “This is the story of a small Transylvanian farming community, where a people believed to be the descendants of the children that were led out of Hamlyn live. Theirs is a landscape redolent of a pre-industrial, pre-enclosure Europe. A silent world that relies on hard work and patience, where the weather and growth set the pace.” - Steidl

  
  

  “Again, images of landscape are punctuated by the faces of those who live there, with portraits that are equally enigmatic and impenetrable as the place itself. For Richardson, ‘Beyond the Forest’ is an allegorical form that speaks of agrarian existence outside of mechanisation, an idyll of sorts, a site of resistance to external forces. There is a crafted Romanticism, tinged with the Gothic imaginary in these pictures that cumulatively draw the viewer into a world that is inextricably bound to the past. There is more than a passing reference to Caspar David Friedrich’s study of abbey ruins framed by the humanised, dead, menacing presence of the forest in winter.” Russell Roberts 2007

  

   In short, the book is excellent, and is extremely cheap, considering the price of some photo books these days. It’s available from Amazon and Steidl directly. I suggest you get yourself a copy.

  (Source: samuelbradley)

  4 Jan 2011 / 16 notes